The Museum of Fashion on display

While performances and a living museum are invented within the Fondation Cartier, Olivier Saillard is deploying a Musée de la Mode en Vitrine in the antique wood-paneled display cases of the Galerie Valois, an arcade located in a passageway of the Palais-Royal underground station, which once connected the underground to the Grand Magasins du Louvre department store, where the beginnings of clothing industrialisation took place.  

This overview of the Fashion Museum questions the way clothing and fashion are usually presented in museums. Each display case thus challenges a conventional approach where fashion is reduced to silence and immobility: static mannequins, garments exhibited as objects and closed display cases evoke the disappearance of fashions and their ephemeral nature. A suitcase, nomadic argument for a pocket museum, wax mannequins, posed as visitors to an exhibition in which they themselves are the visible works, offer an alternative to official museum practices. 

Conception Olivier Saillard with the collaboration of Josephine Pinton

Artistic collaborator: Gael Mamine
Assistants: Zoé Guedard, Robinson Boursault
Sewing: Romain Blot, Guy Chassaing
Hair: Cicci Svahn
Makeup: MAC Cosmetics
With the exceptional collaborations of: Adeline André, Erdal Pinarci, Les Mains de mamie, Sylvie Saillard
Manufacturing envelope books: Caleb Igoulmimene, Anne Bourguignon – Procop
Set construction: Ateliers Artigo

Studio manager: Aymar Crosnier – Studio Olivier Saillard
Production: Briac Geffrault – Studio Olivier Saillard
Artistic direction and graphic design: Antoine Jean, Marie Marotel, Mathieu Delion – Funny Bones
Press relations: Nathalie Ours – PR Consulting, Meriem Otsmane
Commission and financial support: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Coproduction: Studio Olivier Saillard
With the support of: la Ménagerie de verre, as part of the StudioLab program

Acknowledgements: Fondation Azzedine Alaïa – Carla Sozzani president, J. M. Weston, Monsieur Helmut Lang, Monsieur Christian Lacroix, Jean-Philippe Pons, Kiyoto Koseki, Titouan Meillarec, Véronique Belloir, Palais Galliera – Émilie Hammen, Alexandre Samson, Didier Ludot