Le Temps Des Collections Vii : Drap De Laine, De L’utile Au Sublime (Collections’ Time, 7th Edition : Wool Cloth, From Useful To Sublime)

Le Temps des Collections VII: Woolen cloth, from useful to sublime 

The Meeting of Metropolitan Museums organizes from December 7, 2018 to May 19, 2019 the seventh edition of Le Temps des Collections. 

This program launched in 2012 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen is one of the very first initiatives in France to put collections at the heart of museum programming. Each time, it is a question of revealing the richness and variety of public collections, of revealing the behind the scenes and the mystery of the reserves, and of promoting rediscoveries by opening museums to new perspectives. Many guests have followed one another, curators, historians, artists, personalities from the world of culture, or more recently the public with the Visitors’ Room. 

This seventh edition offers six exhibitions around the theme of fashion and textiles. Fabrics, costumes, dresses, jewelry and many other exceptional creations are highlighted. These exhibitions present the specific clothing of emblematic periods of history. From antiquity to contemporary times, many objects that have never been presented are to be discovered! 

The city of Elbeuf is known for its production of woolen cloth since the Middle Ages. Very quickly, the renown of the Elbeuf cloth imposed itself beyond the borders of Normandy. 

The clothing sector becomes one of the privileged outlets of this industry. At the beginning of the 20 th century, local tailors but also Parisian couturiers seized this luxurious product. Companies such as Blin and Blin or Prudhomme, two of the most important manufacturers in Elbeuf, have among their clientele, Lanvin, Hermès, Dior, or Courrèges, which showcase the cloth of Elbeuf for their ready-to-wear lines. -port and for their haute couture creations. This exhibition aims to discover the links woven between Albanian productions and fashion. Archival documents and textile samples from the collections of the Fabrique des savoirs are compared with models signed by the greatest creators of the time.