Louvre Museum Adds Haute Couture to High Antiquity

This photograph shows a dress created by John Galliano for Christian Dior fashion house from the Haute Couture 2005 collection displayed at the exhibition "Louvre Couture, Art and fashion: statement pieces" at the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 23, 2025. (Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)
This photograph shows a dress created by John Galliano for Christian Dior fashion house from the Haute Couture 2005 collection displayed at the exhibition "Louvre Couture, Art and fashion: statement pieces" at the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 23, 2025. (Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)
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Louvre Museum Adds Haute Couture to High Antiquity

This photograph shows a dress created by John Galliano for Christian Dior fashion house from the Haute Couture 2005 collection displayed at the exhibition "Louvre Couture, Art and fashion: statement pieces" at the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 23, 2025. (Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)
This photograph shows a dress created by John Galliano for Christian Dior fashion house from the Haute Couture 2005 collection displayed at the exhibition "Louvre Couture, Art and fashion: statement pieces" at the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 23, 2025. (Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)

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”
A silk ball gown designed by John Galliano for Dior in 2006 sits in the centre of a room dedicated to Louis XIV, lined with ornate, gilded furniture and towering portraits of the Sun King.
In another room, Alexander McQueen's platform Armadillo shoes from 2011 are displayed in a case next to a 17th-century plate featuring pond life.
"The idea of this kind of exhibit is to say 'come to the Louvre, look at the collections differently,'" said Gabet.
Home to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the Louvre has requested urgent help from the French government to restore and renovate its aging exhibition halls and better protect its countless works of art.
The couture exhibition runs through July 21.



Venice Carnival Opens with Biodegradable Streamers and Ode to Casanova

 Revelers participate in the celebrations of the historic Venetian Carnival in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)
Revelers participate in the celebrations of the historic Venetian Carnival in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)
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Venice Carnival Opens with Biodegradable Streamers and Ode to Casanova

 Revelers participate in the celebrations of the historic Venetian Carnival in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)
Revelers participate in the celebrations of the historic Venetian Carnival in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)

The opening weekend of Carnival in Venice culminated with a water procession along the Grand Canal that finished in front of the Rialto Bridge with a flourish of colorful streamers and confetti — all completely biodegradable.

Venice’s Carnival brings thousands of people to the lagoon city to watch the water procession, one of the event’s highlights, and check out people in elaborate costumes and masks who wander the narrow alleys and gather in Piazza St. Marco to be photographed.

The popular event forces authorities to designate some alleyways as one-way, to keep pedestrians moving.

This year’s Carnival celebrations, which run through March 4, are dedicated to the famed philanderer Giacomo Casanova, who was born in Venice 300 years ago.