ETIENNE DAHO'S CLOAKROOM JOINS THE PALAIS GALLIERA'S COLLECTIONS | Palais Galliera | Musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris

ETIENNE DAHO'S CLOAKROOM JOINS THE PALAIS GALLIERA'S COLLECTIONS

© Pari Dukovic/ Universal, 2017

Portrait of Etienne Daho. Crédit : © Pari Dukovic / Universal, 2017

The Palais Galliera is honoured to receive a donation of Etienne Daho's wardrobe. A total of 34 stage and city outfits, dating from 1983 to 2019, bear witness to his unique pop-rock style. Etienne Daho wishes to enrich this donation with other pieces from his wardrobe, in order to keep in memory the outfits and key moments that mark out his career and pass them on to future generations.

His friend, the singer Elli Medeiros, is behind this donation: she herself is a major donor to the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, and it was she who definitely convinced the singer to make this donation to the museum.

Since the beginning of his career, the singer has maintained an emotional relationship with his clothes, which he wanted to express on the occasion of this exceptional gift in these terms: "Stage clothes are companions on the road and armour in which one slips into to become the Other. They are charged with all energies and emotions. Stage fright, the impatience to go on stage, the joys of sharing and the incomparable Great Love. The one we receive and the one we give".

The singer has previously dated and documented each of his outfits, created by the most emblematic fashion houses of our time: Agnès B, Paul Smith, Saint Laurent, Dior Homme, Céline... Thus, the most iconic pieces have been identified with the precious help of his donor.

First of all, there is the Saint James sailor that Daho wears in 1984, in the clip of his flagship song Le grand sommeil and on the cover of his album, La Notte, on which he is photographed by Pierre et Gilles. This sailor is today inseparable from the singer's image, as is his famous black leather Perfecto. This protest garment worn by the "black jackets" of the 1960s, the bikers, the rockers and then the Punks in the 1980s, affirms the artist's taste for Vintage. Daho appropriated it like a second skin: in 1986, he wore it on promotional photographs and on stage; in 1987, on television sets when he sang a duet with Serge Gainsbourg and then Nico. We also find him in 2020, customised, on another photograph of Pierre et Gilles.

Finally, six stage outfits highlight the complicity between Etienne Daho and Hedi Slimane, who is undoubtedly the designer most present in his wardrobe. All of them are dinner jacket jackets that are distinguished by their rich materials - embroidered with sequins, gold or silver lamé - reminiscent of the rockers' wardrobe of the 1960s and 1970s. They date from 2014 to 2019, when Slimane is at the head of Saint Laurent and then Celine, and revolutionises men's fashion.