until Sunday August 25 2024

Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris
T : +33 (0)1 44 31 64 00
5 Avenue Marceau
75116 Paris
France

Contact
moc.siraplsyeesum@scilbup
https://museeyslparis.com

The exhibition Sheer: The diaphanous creations of Yves Saint Laurent is the second chapter of a story that began last summer at the Museum of Lace and Fashion in Calais.

For the exhibition’s next stop, in Paris, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris invited the curator Anne Dressen to be its artistic advisor; she will focus on transparency as a chosen artistic expression of Yves Saint Laurent. The exhibition has been designed by the architect Pauline Marchetti, whose work explores the intersection of perception and space.

Few articles of clothing are entirely transparent. In theory, transparency is incompatible with the very function of clothing, which is to cover the body and conceal or protect it. Intrigued by this contradiction, and by the powerful role diaphanous fabrics could play in his work, Yves Saint Laurent began using materials such as chiffon, lace, and tulle in the 1960s. Like a leitmotif, he regularly employed transparency during his forty creative years, at times alongside embroidered or opaque fabrics. He daringly reconciled these contradictions, allowing women to proudly and boldly assert their bodies.

Drawing on the power inherent in fabric, this new exhibition will explore Yves Saint Laurent’s gaze towards fashion in all its complexity as it relates to the body and the concept of nudity. The forty garments seen in the exhibition include iconic creations that retrace the history of Yves Saint Laurent’s uncovering of the female body, such as the first topless blouse, from the couturier’s spring-summer 1968 collection, baptized the “see-through blouse” by the American press, and the “nude dress,” a black chiffon dress with a belt of ostrich feathers from the following collection. Other rarely-seen creations highlight the couturier’s virtuosity in presenting the silhouette of a powerful and liberated woman. Essential elements of the creative process are also seen in the exhibition: sketches, photographs, patterns on tracing paper, accessories (hats, jewelry, shoes, etc.), as well as a series of drawings by Yves Saint Laurent inspired by the paintings of Goya.

Sheer: The diaphanous creations of Yves Saint Laurent are structured around five thematic sections. The first offers an introduction, exploring several garments made from organza, Cigaline, lace, tulle, and muslin: numerous variations that allowed the couturier to play with different see-through effects. In the following section, the woman’s body is gradually revealed through openwork use of diaphanous fabrics. By using lace and tulle, certain parts of the body are rendered abstract, as if lit by spotlights.

In dialogue with the creations of Yves Saint Laurent, works by modern and contemporary artists are seen throughout the exhibition, including Anne Bourse, Loïe Fuller, and Picabia.