PARIS. — The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, is for first time displaying haute couture gowns and accessories from fashion houses, including Chanel, Saint Laurent and Dior, next to decorative arts from ancient Greece to France’s Second Empire.
“Paris is the capital of fashion – there is a very strong relationship between the fashion houses and Paris, and the Louvre is in the heart of Paris,” Olivier Gabet, director of the museum’s decorative arts department, told Reuters on Friday at the opening of the couture exhibition.
Fashion houses have used the grounds of the Louvre for shows — but not the museum itself — and fashion designers, including Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy and Karl Lagerfeld, have long had an affinity for the museum and its collections.
But Gabet said the exhibition was “the first time the Louvre brings fashion inside the museum in this way.”