\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tOlivier Saillard<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJean-Baptiste Mondino\/Courtesy of Olivier Saillard<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe garments will be attached to beige linen dresses worn by nine models, like mobile canvases. Saillard himself will present the performances, which run Wednesdays through Sundays at 5 p.m., beginning Sunday to March 21.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhether there are five people or 50, I\u2019ll be on hand to walk them through it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tModels will read texts by the likes of French poet St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9, who wrote about fashion under the pen name Miss Satin; perform little choreographies, and show off the designs.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019ll go from a poem to a gesture, to a workwear jacket, to Helmut Lang\u2019s clothes, to a threadbare dress by Madame Gr\u00e8s \u2013 things that simply breathe poetry and life,\u201d Saillard said.<\/p>\n \n\tA longtime fan of vintage fashion, he\u2019s bought damaged dresses by the likes of Jeanne Lanvin and Crist\u00f3bal Balenciaga to save them from oblivion.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ve always found it a shame that in an archeology museum, there are fragments and ceramic shards \u2014 and it\u2019s no big deal that something is missing \u2014 but fashion won\u2019t allow that. So I gave myself the right to show very damaged things, like a symbol of the fleeting nature of fashion,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis project is about honoring all the lost, mended, discarded and forgotten garments \u2014 those everyday items that are overlooked,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \n\tTo celebrate those unsung heroes, Saillard tapped Erdal Pinarci, a master tailor who has been with Ala\u00efa since 1996, to piece together a tailored jacket in the style of Ala\u00efa or Christian Dior, using scraps from used workwear pants. He also had a dress made from dozens of handkerchiefs embroidered with women\u2019s first names.<\/p>\n \n\tFor his performance with Picasso, Saillard will explore how her personal style inspired Yves Saint Laurent\u2019s spring 1971 collection, which the historian credits with popularizing vintage fashion. Their talk will unfold against the backdrop of the designer\u2019s sketches.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe is very impressive,\u201d Saillard said. \u201cShe\u2019s managed to carve her own path despite the weight of her family heritage. In fact, she explains that wearing \u201840s clothes in the early \u201870s, when everyone was doing the opposite, was her way of blazing her own trail.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tOlivier Saillard adjusts a garment on a model for his \u201cLiving Museum of Fashion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGabriele Rosati\/Courtesy of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tHis performance with Swinton promises to be more conceptual, as it\u2019s an exploration of the role and aesthetics of window display mannequins. Saillard, who is director of the Fondation Azzedine Ala\u00efa, has made copies of a Madeleine Vionnet dress from its collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhile I put the \u2018facsimile\u2019 dresses on wood and plaster mannequins from different eras, someone will try them on [Tilda] to see who is more alive. We want to show the paradox that sometimes a living body can be completely absent,\u201d he explained. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe location has a special resonance. Fondation Cartier\u2019s new headquarters in the Palais-Royal district, inaugurated last October, used to house the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhile researching his latest book, \u201cA History of Fashion,\u201d published in French by Bouquins Editions, Saillard found out that the store was the first to sell \u201cready-made\u201d dresses in the 19th century, marking the birth of a more democratic approach to dressing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFor the first time in a store, there were not just bolts of fabric, but matching tops and skirts,\u201d he said. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t seem like a big deal, but it was a revolution in fashion and it\u2019s a little-known fact.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn a nod to that history, he\u2019s taking over the antique wood-paneled display cases of the Galerie Valois, an arcade located in a passageway that once connected the Palais Royal \u2014 Mus\u00e9e du Louvre underground station to the department store. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI like the idea that\u2019s inside the subway station. It\u2019s free and it\u2019s an allegory of a fashion museum behind glass,\u201d Saillard said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PARIS \u2014 \u201cMuseums can feel a little dead.\u201d So says Olivier Saillard, who for seven years was director of Palais Galliera, the Paris fashion museum, and has curated numerous exhibitions for other institutions. The fashion historian has long mulled the strangeness of showing clothes absent their original owners.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve always thought of fashion museums as places for remains \u2014 almost morbid in a way,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s something about them that feels linked to death. They\u2019re museums of missing men and women, and that\u2019s a striking realization when you work there.\u201d So when the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris offered him a two-week residency, Saillard dubbed it \u201cLe Mus\u00e9e Vivant de la Mode\u201d \u2014 \u201cThe Living Museum of Fashion\u201d in English. Instead of static displays, he plans to show clothes on models via daily live presentations. On the weekends, he will stage one-off performances with his longtime collaborator, British actress Tilda Swinton, and jewelry designer Paloma Picasso, marking their first joint project. \u201cI was hesitant to do this at first, but at a certain point, I sat down and asked myself, \u2018What is it you really want?\u2019 I\u2019m turning 60, I\u2019ve done more than 250 exhibitions, I\u2019ve done performances. I closed my eyes and thought, \u2018I want to invent my own living museum of fashion,\u2019\u201d he recalled.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s the museum of fashion gestures and movement, but also in a way, the museum of the living \u2014 meaning those who are alive,\u201d he added. That\u2019s why, instead of showcasing the kind of haute couture gowns beyond the reach of mere mortals, Saillard wanted to exalt ordinary clothes \u2014 including some with extraordinary owners.\u00a0 Guardians of Memory He borrowed items from the personal wardrobes of designers \u2014 Helmut Lang\u2019s hole-ridden T-shirt, Christian Lacroix\u2019s patchwork jacket from the \u201890s or Azzedine Ala\u00efa\u2019s uniform of black Chinese tunic and pants among them. They will be shown alongside workwear garments and designer clothes that are beyond repair, and would be con…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Olivier](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Olivier-Saillard.jpg?w=232\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\t\tDepartment Store Roots\t<\/h2>\n
![\"Olivier](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4-550-copy.jpg?w=240\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>