Fashion Mix: French Fashion, Foreign Designers at the Immigration Museum – Paris

December 9, 2014 through May 31, 2015

– Featuring a selection of iconic coats, dresses, hats and accessories spanning more than a century of creation, “Fashion Mix: French Fashion, Foreign Designers,” celebrates the contributions to the French fashion industry of immigrant artisans, craftsmen and designers. From Charles Frederick Worth to Elsa Schiaparelli, Cristobal Balenciaga to Paco Rabane, Issey Miyake to Yohji Yamamoto and Azzedine Alaïa to Martin Margiela, for decades foreign designers have enriched French fashion history and contributed to the reputation of Paris as the fashion capital of the world.

Using garments that highlight the ethnic influences immigrant designers bring to their work as well as public and private documents to recount their personal histories, the display includes rare selections culled from the City of Paris Museum of Fashion’s archives which are rarely on display due to their extreme fragility. Among the notable examples are a Worth wedding gown with an eight foot organza train, a form-fitting Schiarparelli evening gown adorned with butterflies, an exuberant, ruffled, polka-dot cape by Balenciaga, a color-blocked Miyake evening gown in a rainbow of hues, and a harlequin patterned, Yamamoto wrap coat.

Worth Wedding Gown

Balenciaga Butterfly Cape

Yamamoto Coat

Official Exhibition Site