1997 FASHION BIG BANG

Martin Margiela, "Stockman" collection, ready-to-wear Spring-Summer 1997 © Palais Galliera, Paris / Paris Musées

EXHIBITION I GROUND FLOOR

07.03 - 16.07.2023

From 7 March to 16 July 2023, the Palais Galliera is organising an exhibition focusing on the year 1997, a watershed year in the history of contemporary fashion.

1997 was both a high point of 1990s fashion and the gateway to the new millennium. It brought a flurry of collections, shows, new appointments, openings and events that defined the fashion scene as we know it today. Such was its impact that 1997 can be thought of as the launching pad for 21st century fashion.

1997 was notable for a number of emblematic collections: bodies deformed by Comme des Garçons with the Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body collection, Martin Margiela’s conceptualised garments in the Stockman collection, and Raf Simons’s redefinition of the canons of male beauty in the Black Palms collection.

The magazine Vogue Paris defined the 1997 Spring-Summer haute couture season as the ‘Big Bang’ that Paris needed in order to regain its place as the international capital of fashion in an era of economic crisis and intense global competition. But there’s no denying that 1997 was a vintage year. It saw the arrival in haute couture of star designers from the 1980s, such as Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler, while the legendary French fashion houses were taken over by a new generation of British designers, with Alexander McQueen at Givenchy and John Galliano at Christian Dior.

The globalisation of fashion gathered pace, foreshadowing the 2000s and 2010s. Young, little-known artistic directors rose to prominence, either on their own or at the head of major fashion houses: Hedi Slimane, Stella McCartney, Nicolas Ghesquière, Olivier Theyskens – names that are still shaping fashion today.

A whole series of events marked the beginning of the new era: the concept store Colette opened and stayed at the epicentre of fashion for the next 20 years. But also, that same year, the world of fashion was shaken by the tragic death of Gianni Versace.

The chronological layout of the exhibition features over 50 silhouettes from the Palais Galliera collections, along with loans from museums and international collectors and fashion houses. And it also includes videos and some outstanding archive documents.

The exhibition 1997 Fashion Big Bang is an invitation to discover or to relive key events from this ‘explosive’ year in fashion history.

CURATOR : 
Alexandre Samson, Head of collections, haute couture (after 1947) and contemporary creation departments, at the Palais Galliera,
assisted by Louise Habert