Paris (AFP)

First Chanel retrospective, exploration of the little-known facet of Man Ray photographer for fashion designers, history of precious stones ... in the midst of a pandemic, the French are reveling in fashion in museums.

"There is an appetite for cultural values ​​(...) and fashion exhibitions are very accessible," fashion historian Olivier Saillard told AFP.

Since the end of September, he has been presenting the second part of the exhibition, bringing together the creations of Azzedine Alaïa and Christobal Balenciaga.

Like many others, this exhibition at the Alaïa Foundation in Paris was inaugurated around Paris Fashion Week, now largely virtual.

- Two weeks waiting -

Covid restrictions have since tightened further, but there is a two-week wait before booking online for the Chanel exhibition at Palais Galliera.

"We have a very intimate relationship with fashion, we express ourselves through our clothes. In fashion exhibitions, we have a visual expression that doesn't intimidate people, they feel comfortable, free to give. their opinion ", underlines Miren Arzalluz, director of the Galliera palace.

From the 1916 jersey sailor top to the 1960s suit, including the little black dress, the N5 perfume and opulent jewelry: masked visitors discover the real "Chanel style" that everyone has heard of.

At the Tissue Museum in Lyon, attendance is less for the exhibition dedicated to the subversive Briton Vivienne Westwood, inaugurated in the midst of the epidemic, than for the previous one on the collaboration of Yves Saint Laurent with the silk workers of Lyon which had welcomed 80,000 visitors. before the health crisis.

"People go out less, we have no tourists," Esclarmonde Monteil, director of the museum, told AFP.

But given the context, the numbers are not that bad with 350-500 visitors per day for Westwood against 700-800 for Saint Laurent.

With these two exhibitions, fashion entered the largest fabric museum in the world, renovated and modernized.

- "To marvel to instruct" -

"Fashion does not exist on its own, we can feel the echoes between fashion, the decorative arts, it's interesting for us, it makes visitors who come for fashion discover other disciplines", underlines Ms. Monteil.

The Natural History Museum in Paris "amazes to educate" in the world of precious stones which combines geology and jewelry creations from Maison Van Cleef & Arpels.

"Precious stones are inert elements which manage to capture the ephemeral and fragile beauty of nature. They play with light and give an impression of life", suggests Nicolas Bos, president of Van Cleef & Arpels.

The Musée du Luxembourg in Paris is also taking a gamble on fashion by presenting the American artist Man Ray from an angle little known as a fashion photographer, showing how his avant-garde aesthetic was able to spread with photos initially taken for advertising of 'a mascara.

Before that, "here we never had fashion in the title of an exhibition", underlines Alain Sayag, scientific curator of the exhibition "Man Ray and fashion".

"It's a deliberate choice, we bring fashion through a famous artist" in a museum used to "heritage and painting exhibitions".

- Decline of magazines -

According to Esclarmonde Monteil, for 10-15 years "we have stopped considering fashion as something futile and ephemeral. It is part of an artistic evolution and is not that ephemeral, we see the return of shapes, styles ".

A fitted Westwood jacket with "plate" sleeves is displayed next to Charles de Blois' 14th century doublet, a masterpiece from the Lyon museum, cut in the same way.

For Olivier Saillard, the success of fashion exhibitions is also linked to "the decline of magazines and fashion on television".

"The success of the Dior exhibition with 700,000 admissions in 2018 at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris" has no equivalent in terms of readership of a fashion magazine, he says.

© 2020 AFP