Noticed in 1997 during his first collection for Guy Laroche, Alber Elbaz was appointed the following year to head Saint Laurent Rive Gauche.

For Lanvin, from 2001 to 2015, he developed his most brilliant creations and revived the century-old house at the dawn of the 21st century.

At the service of the woman's body, for which he does not restrict any movement, he develops a fashion of dresses, often short, with exacerbated feminine details. With mischief, he exposes the structures of the garment, showing the clean-cut edges, the seams and the zippers put outside.

In 2015, the Palais Galliera had the honour and pleasure of collaborating with the couturier who was the artistic director of the retrospective "Jeanne Lanvin", devoted to the history of the House of Lanvin and its founding couturier, whose contemporaneity he so brilliantly revealed.

In 2021, after a five-year hiatus, he launched his own label, AZ Factory.

In France, fashion research is rich, diversified and innovative. However, this vitality is not always perceived and it is common to hear that "France is lagging behind" or that French "Fashion Studies" do not exist. It is said that research is done elsewhere; that the best academic journals are Anglo-Saxon; that fashion specialists work in England, the United States, or Northern Europe -- in other words, everywhere else than in France. Culture(s) de Mode wants to give back to France all the place it deserves by creating the first French network of research and reflection around fashion.

> A network of interdisciplinary researchers and professionals in Fashion

Created in 2017, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Culture(s) de Mode is a network bringing together for the first time all the researchers, professionals and enthusiasts who work on fashion in France. With the support of the Ministry of Culture, it aims to promote, support and encourage all initiatives on fashion research in France. Culture(s) de Mode understands "fashion research" in the broad sense of anyone who analyses, deciphers, writes, preserves, restores, and makes fashion. Thus, Culture(s) de Mode addresses students, professors, researchers, museum curators, archivists, designers, engineers, theorists, practitioners, philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, writers, journalists and the curious... "Fashion" is also understood in the broadest sense and encompasses clothing, accessories, textiles, appearances, and the practices associated with clothing

> Practical tools for research

Culture(s) de Mode aims to support research through various tools. The website, culturesdemode.com, makes all research initiatives visible. It already publishes an agenda indicating conferences, symposiums, study days, calls for applications, exhibitions and books related to fashion cultures in France; a bibliography of works on fashion published in France; a chronology and podcasts. Soon, it will unveil an interactive map listing over 100 public and private institutions in France with fashion and textile collections.

> Helping researchers conduct their work and disseminate their knowledge

Culture(s) de Mode offers practical tools to researchers to enable them to produce more knowledge: grants for the translation of articles into foreign languages and for mobility abroad; training workshops on research tools; networking events... Culture(s) de Mode sets up a series of workshops reserved for members: workshops to discover museum archives, meetings with professionals, themed conferences...

> Organisation

Honorary President:
Olivier Saillard, Historian, Curator, Performer, Former Director of the Palais Galliera, Artistic Director of Weston

Director :
Sophie Kurkdjian, Docteur, Chercheuse IHTP-CNRS, Professeur associé, Université américaine de Paris.

Steering Committee :
Miren Arzalluz, Director, Palais Galliera
Maude Bass-Krueger, Professor, Ghent University
Denis Bruna, Chief Curator, MAD
Emanuele Coccia, Senior Lecturer, EHESS
Olivier Gabet, Director, MAD
Sophie Maire, Head of Institutional Promotion, MNAAG (Musée Guimet)
Gaspard De Massé, Head of the Balenciaga archives
Aurélie Mossé, Teacher-researcher, co-director of the Soft Matters research group, EnsAD, PSL
Marco Pecorari, Programme Director, Parsons - The New School, Paris
Sylvie Roy, Documentary Studies Officer, Palais Galliera
Aurélie Samuel, Director of Collections, YSL Museum, Paris
Sandrine Tinturier, Historian, Azzedine Alaïa Foundation
Géraldine-Julie Sommier, Director, Patrimoine Chloé
Stephanie Strauss, Director, Mandhari Agency
Patrice Verdière, Professor, École Duperré
Jeanne Vicérial, Doctor, EnsAD-PSL, designeur, Villa Médicis
Marlène Van de Casteele, Doctor, Lyon 2; Teacher, EnsAD

> Culture(s) de Mode's contact 

> Email : contact@culturesdemode.com
> Instagram : @cultures_de_mode
> Facebook : @lesculturesdemode
> Twitter : @culturesdemode

Last December, the Palais Galliera welcomed forensic doctor Philippe Charlier and his students to carry out a study of one of the little-known treasures in the collections of the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, combining forensic techniques with the history of clothing, as part of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. 

> Historical context :

In July 1870, Napoleon III declares war on Prussia in a turbulent social context. In six weeks, France suffered a series of defeats on its own territory, and Napoleon III was imprisoned by the Prussians on 4 September 1870 after his defeat at Sedan. Paris was besieged, but the Parisians resisted repeated attacks until the government agreed to an armistice on 28 January 1871.

New elections were then held, bringing to power a majority royalist assembly, governed by Thiers. This new government settled in Versailles, not in Paris, where the climate was tense. A feeling of betrayal animated the less well-off social classes, who had been resisting for several weeks.

On 18 March 1871, the Parisians rebelled against the new government. This was the beginning of the Paris Commune, which lasted 72 days and ended with the "Bloody Week" from 21 to 28 May 1871, marked by numerous executions.

"Execution under the Commune"; Collection of the Musée Carnavalet-Histoire de Paris 

> President Bonjean's suit :

The object of the study carried out by Dr Charlier's students is a suit of clothes that belonged to Louis-Bernard Bonjean (1804-1871). He was one of the victims of the Paris Commune in May 1871: as the first provisional president of the Court of Cassation, he was shot on the Place de la République in reprisal for the execution of communards.
Part of his wardrobe is preserved in the reserves of the Palais Galliera, including the three-piece black wool suit he wore on the day he was executed by the Paris Commune on 24 May 1871. Riddled with bullet holes, this suit is one of the rare testimonies of this dark period in the history of Paris.

 
{Left} Portrait of President Bonjean; Collection Musée Carnavalet-Histoire de Paris
{Right} Habit of President Bonjean; Collection Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris

>The autopsy :

The scientific group of the "Forensic Anthropology Techniques" diploma of the University of Paris-Saclay met in the storerooms of the Palais Galliera in order to carry out a forensic analysis as well as a ballistic study of the garment, on a mannequin or an examination table. In the manner of a crime scene where the clothing replaces the body, the ballistic lesions were reconstituted from the entry and exit orifices, completed by secondary toxicological analyses at the CHU Lariboisière laboratory, and by microscopic analyses at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum, where Doctor Charlier heads the Research and Teaching Department. The calibre of the weapons used, the angles of attack, as well as the list of organs potentially affected, thus allowed an anatomical and clinical 3D reconstruction, before formulating hypotheses on the impacts involved in the victim's death.

 
President Bonjean's suit in the hands of Dr Charlier, December 2020 

The scientific report has just been published, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, and the conclusions are fascinating. The autopsy confirms the few testimonies written about this execution: the available historical accounts describe a shooting by a platoon of volunteer communards present at the scene, motivated by a feeling of injustice and revenge. The state of Louis-Bernard Bonjean's clothing and the laboratory analyses reinforce this image of a multiple shooting, with different shooters, with numerous shots hitting the whole body as well as the victim's head (which was probably hit post-mortem by a final shot).

This report thus highlights the importance of biomedical examinations, particularly forensic ones, in the exploration of ancient artefacts, the results of which provide indispensable elements in the understanding of the context of this significant episode in the history of Paris.

This project is part of the research policy that the Palais Galliera is committed to developing in close collaboration with higher education institutions (Parsons School, the University of Paris IV, the INP) and other national museums (in this case the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac).

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.