Blog | HPRG Behind the scenes of haute couture in Lyon exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum until 5th December 2021 – Hotels Paris Rive Gauche Blog

Behind the scenes of haute couture in Lyon exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum until 5th December 2021

Newly open after the end of confinement, albeit with reduced hours, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum has a new temporary exhibition on offer, showcasing the beautiful fabrics made in Lyon that were created, inspired and used by Saint Laurent for over forty years.

Behind the scenes of haute couture in Lyon exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum until 5th December 2021

To make a beautiful dress you obviously need beautiful fabric, and the combination of Yves Saint Laurent’s genius and the savoir-faire of Lyon’s renowned fabric manufacturers has left us with some gorgeous examples..

This new exhibition, organised in collaboration with Lyon’s Fabric Museum, presents around thirty haute couture models together with numerous documents detailing the synergy between the fashion designer and seven Lyon-based fabric houses specialised in crepe, chiffon, velvet and more, with explanations of the techniques used in making them.

Behind the scenes of haute couture in Lyon exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum until 5th December 2021

The exhibition also gives more details on Yves Saint Laurent’s creative process, and includes some dressed never shown to the public before. You’ll see how a dress can inspire the creation of a certain fabric, but also how the fabric itself can inspire the dress by the way it folds, falls or reflects the light. Saint Laurent found this way of creating fascinating, likening it to the work of a painter or writer.

Behind the scenes of haute couture in Lyon exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum until 5th December 2021
© Guy Marineau / Yves Saint Laurent

For more in-depth details on the exhibition’s subject, there are 90-minute guided visits from Thursday to Saturday at 9am (available in French, English, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Japanese), and a catalogue has just been published (168 pages, 35€ here at amazon.fr), available with an orange, pink or ‘green’ cover.

You can check out 38 pages taken from the catalogue here.


The exhibition Yves Saint Laurent – Behind the scenes of haute couture in Lyon is at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum (here) until 5th December 2021

Open from Thursday-Sunday from 11am-6pm

Admission: 10€ / 7€

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