While New York hosts the Met Gala, Paris boasts its own prestigious fashion event: Le Grand Dîner du Louvre. On March 4, during Women's Fashion Week, the Louvre Museum hosted the fashion elite for an exclusive gala evening and dinner in the stunning Cour Marly, the museum’s grand centerpiece.

Sponsored by Visa Infinite, the event brought together renowned fashion houses and designers to raise funds in support of the museum’s initiatives. The Grand Dîner du Louvre is conceived as an extension of the Louvre Couture: Objets d'Art, Objets de Mode exhibition.

“For the first time in its history, the Louvre will host an exhibition entirely dedicated to fashion, its origins, and inspirations,” reads a statement. “This unprecedented and historic showcase will unfold within the very heart of our collections, engaging in a vibrant dialogue with the masterpieces housed in the Louvre’s Department of Decorative Arts. Featuring 71 silhouettes and 30 accessories loaned by 45 fashion houses, the exhibition offers a one-of-a-kind journey through some of the world’s most exquisite art objects.”

In consideration of the Louvre’s encyclopedic immensity, the exhibition, curated by Olivier Gabet, follows a methodological approach geared towards exploring the history of decorative styles, art professions and ornamentation through the galleries of the Department of Decorative Arts, where textiles are omnipresent, though generally in tapestries and other décor items rather than in articles of clothing.

Over a nearly 9,000-square-metre space, 65 designs are displayed, along with several accessories, newly illuminating the close historical dialogue that continues to take place between the world of fashion and the department’s greatest masterpieces, from Byzantium to the Second Empire. Each of these garments and accessories is on special loan from the most iconic fashion houses, both long-standing and recent, in Paris and throughout the world.

The pieces will not be displayed aimlessly throughout the Department of Decorative Arts, but rather will serve as an occasion to highlight existing parallels: the department owes part of its collection to the generosity of great fashion figures, from Jacques Doucet to Madame Carven. These countless connections embrace common methodological ground in the fields of art history and fashion: knowledge of ancestral techniques, visual culture and the subtle interplay of references, from the catalogue raisonné of the museum to the moodboard of the fashion world. ‘Louvre Couture’ offers a new perspective on decorative arts through the prism of contemporary fashion design.

Louvre Couture: objets d'art, objets de mode
Until July 21, 2025

The Grand Dîner du Louvre
March 04, 2025
Musée du Louvre
www.louvre.fr