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The exhibition highlights this stylistic transition and Worth’s lasting
influence on his successors, illustrating how haute couture has become a
constantly evolving art. But the magic also happens behind the scenes.
The exhibition reveals the workshops, the workers, the seamstresses’repe-
titive gestures, and the thousands of anonymous hands without whom
the dream would not exist. We also discover historical influences from the
Louis XVI style to Ottoman motifs and formal daring, such as the famous
tea gown with no waist seam, to the latest designs from the 1920s with the
creation of the famous Worth blue.
With Worth, fashion ceased to be artisanal and became an institution.
This sumptuous and immense exhibition brings back to life a world
where elegance was already not only a matter of taste,
but of power, image, and the avant-garde.
WORTH
INVENTING HAUTE COUTURE
Petit Palais Paris - until September 7
www.petitpalais.paris.fr
Worth, Housedress or Tea-gown, circa 1896-1897.
Fashioned silk with green satin ground and blue cut velvet patterns, machine-made cotton
lace, green and blue shifting silk taffeta lining.
Palais Galliera, Paris Fashion Museum.
CCØ Paris Musées / Palais Galliera, Paris Fashion Museum.