Paco Rabanne, Métallurgiste De La Mode (Collections’ Time, 7th Edition: Paco Rabanne, Fashion Metallurgist)

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. Fromvantiquity to contemporary times, many objects that have never been presented are to be discovered! 

 Using hitherto unusual materials (Rhodoïd pellets, metal plates, etc.), Paco Rabanne’s creations revolutionized fashion in the 1960s.  

From his first collection presented in 1966, he had chosen to show “12 dresses importable in contemporary materials”, parading to the sound of Pierre Boulez’s masterless hammer. It is on this subversive and original adventure that the Le Secq des Tournelles Museum wishes to return, by studying in particular the creations made of metal by the couturier, whose material echoes the collections of the museum. Drawing on archival documents, videos, magazines and of course on original pieces, this exhibition will highlight the innovative work of the designer who has been able to renew the vocabulary of fashion in such a radical way. 

Image courtesy of Musée Le Secq Des Tournelles / Rouen’s Beaux-Arts Museum