An exhibition at the Louvre-Lens in France examines centuries of interplay between art and fashion, including what the sartorial choices of artists revealed about their place in society.
Fashion and art have long danced a pas de deux, with artists evoking dress in their work and designers referencing art in their creations.
But rarely are the two examined together by major art institutions, said Annabelle Ténèze, the director of the Musée du Louvre-Lens, a satellite in Lens, northern France, of the famed Musée du Louvre. “The intersection of art and fashion speaks to everyone. We all dress every day, which is an act of artistic expression, in its way. I thought, ‘Why not look at the history of this relationship, and show how it fits into our lives today?’”
Shortly after her appointment to the museum in 2022, Ténèze proposed the long-gestating subject to her colleague, Olivier Gabet, who leads the Louvre’s decorative arts department in Paris, and suggested they curate it together. “I thought it was a fierce and strong idea,” Gabel said in an interview last week, “because it can be read on so many different layers.”
The result is “The Art of Dressing: Dressing Like an Artist,” an exhibition of 200 artworks and fashion items that explores how these two creative worlds circle, intersect and inspire each other and, at times, meld into one. It opens at the Louvre-Lens on Wednesday and runs through July 21.
“The Art of Dressing” is the Louvre’s second exhibition that mixes fashion with art, after “Louvre Couture,” a show curated by Gabet that opened in January in Paris. For that show, Gabet set contemporary fashion and accessories among the museum’s art and furniture collections to reveal a dialogue between métiers and eras.
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