Tuesday March 21 was a mix of sun and cloud with a high of 15C. We took the Métro to the Palais Galliera musée de la Mode in the 16th arrondissement. We went to see the exhibit 1997 Fashion Big Bang.
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| Outside of the Palais Galliera which had undergone a major renovation before its reopening in 2013. |
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| Inner courtyard |
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| Poster for the exhibit |
The exhibit's theme was that 1997 was an exceptional year in the history of fashion. From fashion shows and new emerging designers, the exhibit notes say there were no more than 50 key dates during that year. It started in October 1996 during the ready-to-wear catwalk shows, when five designers offered visions that were as radical as they were complementary. Then in January 1997, haute-couture week saw the highly anticipated first collections of major fashion figures which marked the revival of haute-couture.
Vogue Paris defined the 1997-98 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. Young little-known artistic dircectors rose to prominence, either on their own or at the head of major fashion houses. Hedi Slimane, Stella McCartney,Nicolas Ghesquière, Oliviens Theyskens - names that are still shaping fashion today.
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October 8, 1996, Comme des Garçons bu Rei Kawakubo, Spring-Summer 1997, "Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body" collection. By placing protrusions under tight-fitting garments,
she merged the garment to the body. |
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| October 7-16, 1996, Martin Margiela "Stockman" collection, Spring-Summer, 1997 |
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October 9, 1996, Ann Demeulemeester, Spring-summer, 1997, homage to Patti Smith,
with whom she became a good friend.
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October 12, 1997, Yohji Yamamoto, collection "Homages"--
paying homage to the great masters of French haute couture. |
From the 200 fashion houses that existed in 1946, there were only 15 in 1996. According to the press, in order to survive the declining industry needed a "media counter-offensive. This happened during the search for a new head of Christian Dior in July 1996. In October, John Galliano was appointed Artistic Director. Then Alexander McQueen was appointed head of Givenchy. Their first haute-couture collections would be in January and they were joined by Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler.
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| January 19, 1997, Givenchy par Alexander McQueen, Haute couture, Spring-Summer 1997. |
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| Givenchy par McQueen, Spring-Summer 1997 |
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| Jean-Paul Gaultier, Haute couture, Spring-Summer 1997. He presented his last collection in 2020. |
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March 7, 1997, Fendi, Le sac "Baguette" Lisio, Autumn-Winter 1997-78. The bag was popularized
in the pilot episode of Sex and the City, filmed in June 1997 in New York. By 2017, over a million copies of the Fendi baguette, in its many iterations, had been sold. |
The opening of Colette, the concept store in Paris, also took place in 1997. It closed its doors in 2017.
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| January 20, 1997, Christian Dior par John Galliano. He went on to have a 14-year career at Dior. |
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| January 22, 1997, Thierry Mugler, "Les Insectes" |
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| Walter Van Beirendonck, 1997 |
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| Christian Lacroix took a theatrical turn in 1997, evoking 1880s fashions. |
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Givenchy by Alexander McQueen, Haute couture, Autumn- Winter, 1997- 1998. The collection mixed references to the 19th century, with costumes and accessories across the five continents. The silhouettes bristled with horns, talons, or skulls of birds of prey, his favourite animals.
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There was a room that had a video of the funeral of Gianni Versace who was murdered outside his Miami home, nine days after his haute-couture runway show in July 1997. Diana, Princess of Wales, attended the funeral of Versace and then 39 days later, she was killed in a car crash in Paris. Many in the fashion world attended her funeral.
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| A few days after her death, Giorgio Armani published an illustration of the dress he was making for her. |
In another small room there was a video of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac designing outfits for the Pope and nearly 5,500 celebrants for the August 18-24, 1997 twelfth edition of the World Youth Days which brought together almost 1,200,000 Catholics from around the world.
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| Designs for the outfits |
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| Video of the Pope wearing his colourful robe |
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| One of the Robes |
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| July 6, 1997, Last Collection of Gianni Versace |
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| Jeremy Scott, 1998 "Rich White Women" collection |
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| Chloé par Stella McCartney, Ready to Wear, Spring-Summer, 1998 |
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| Véronique Branquinho, Ready to Wear, Spring-Summer, 1998. She graduated in 1995 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and was influenced by the group of Belgian designers called the "Antwerp Six" and by Martin Margiela. |
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Balenciaga par Nicolas Ghesquière, Ready to Wear, Spring-Summer 1998.
He began his 16 year career with Balenciaga in 1997.
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| Merce Cunningham ballet, 1997- costumes by Rei Kawakubo |
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| 1997, Comme des Garçons par Rei Kawakubo |
It was an interesting exhibit, making the case that 1997 was indeed a pivotal year for fashion.
As we were leaving the Galliera, we saw someone taking fashion photo near the columns.
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Fashion photo
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We went across the road to Le Galliera, a brasserie, which had been recommended. We shared a large vegan salad with roasted vegetables, quinoa, sweet potato, avocado, tomatoes and greens. It hit the spot.
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| Alain with lunch |
We also went next door to La Pâtisserie Cyril Lignac and got an amazing apple treat. They had a lot of Easter chocolates as well.
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| A wonderful bakery we had been to last year. |
We started our walk back towards the centre of town and stumbled upon the Jardin de la Nouvelle France, 1859, near Avenue Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was named after the former French colony in Canada and is a beautiful small park in the 8th arrondissement near a busy crossroads.
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Signage
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| Bust of Samuel de Champlain |
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| Bust of Jacques Cartier |
In 1962, a maple tree was planted in the park by former mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau.
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| Dream of the Poet- a single block of white marble in the Park. It was erected in 1910 by sculptor Alphonse de Moncel and is a monument to d'Alfred de Musset. |
We walked down part of the Champs Élysées and saw a number of police and vans at the ready. All was quiet, but this seems to be one of the areas where they gather.
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| Gendarmes in groups |
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| Line of vans in front of the Grand Palais- just off the Champs Élysées |
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| All quiet at the Place de la Concorde, where demonstrations had taken place last Thursday |
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| Armed with riot gear and tear gas canisters near La Concorde |
We stopped at the nearby Ladurée and Alain finally found a pain au chocolat pistache, his favourite treat.
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| Bunnies at Ladurée |
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Alain with his treat
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We did some window shopping along Rue Saint-Honoré, passing another Louis Vuitton store with mirrored dots.
We walked through Place Vendôme and saw a temporary installation of
The Parabola of History by French artist Bernar Venet (b. 1941), curated by Jérôme Sans.
We decided we would take a look in the store. This store was set up as a gift shop. There were no racks of clothes- just display areas where one could buy items on display. There was also a small chocolate shop area with Louis Vuitton trunks and a café where one could buy extremely expensive pastries and tea/coffee.
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| Chocolate area |
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| Display items one could buy-- grey suited salespeople were there to assist |
It was fun to wander around but there wasn't one item in the store that wasn't outrageously priced. It is no wonder we never venture into their stores.
Our next destination was Café Laurent at the Hotel d'Aubusson on Rue Dauphine where we wanted to hear some jazz and get a drink.
We passed a wonderful store, Oona, on Rue Dauphine, which had a great section of women's clothes.
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| Outside Oona |
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| Outside the Hotel |
Café Laurent opened in 1690 and had been a meeting place of writers and artists in Saint-Germain. In 1947, it became the
Tabou, a meeting place for famous intellectuals after the war and one of the well-known jazz venues in Paris.
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| The gorgeous back lounge with a fire place-- no one was there on a quiet Tuesday night |
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| The bar (photo taken from the back room) |
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Front room with comfortable seating and where the jazz concerts take place.
Alain had a"Brise Parisienne" cocktail and I had a glass of Sancerre. |
We caught the first set of a duo of Ilana Bens (vocal) and Thomas Duvigneau (piano). The piano player was excellent and we recognised him from a set we had heard with a group last year. After the set, he went to sit with his girlfriend who was sitting beside us. We had a nice chat about jazz and Paris as well as the impact of Wayne Shorter, who had just recently passed. Thomas had studied in The Hague and often plays at the Hotel.
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| The Duo- the vocalist sang a mix of English and French standards (a few new ones for us!) |
We then crossed back from the Left Bank on the Seine to catch the Métro at Pont Neuf on the Right Bank to get us directly back to our Métro stop on the Left Bank in under 10 minutes (6 quick stops).
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| Crossing the Seine at night to get to the Métro |
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| Looking the other way |
We got back to the apartment just after 10:00 p.m. and had some left-over pasta and salad and a glass of red wine.
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