Glamor still essential to the fashion game

By Kunang Helmi Picard

PARIS (JP): When we talk about fashion in Paris we conjure up an image of beautiful models parading expensive clothes down catwalks past an audience of curious eyes.

However, more than just a center for a glittering view of fashion, this city also takes care of its fashion past.

If you want a glimpse of past creations in high fashion, just drop by the fashion museum -- the Parisian Museum for Fashion and Costumes -- featuring creations by noted designers.

This past March, the museum management moved its collection from the cramped storage rooms of Galliera Palace to the more hip Bastille quarter.

The capacity of these new storage rooms will enable 30,000 costumes and 40,000 accessories to be kept dust-free and protected from the harsh rays of sunlight. Six restoration experts work full-time preparing exhibits and maintaining all the precious objects spread across 4,000 square meters of space.

All information is stored on computer and there is a special photo studio for documentation purposes. A total of 40,000 photographic prints and fashion etchings together with thousands of material samples complete the unseen and rich collection of the museum.

To celebrate the new facilities, a new show, "Memories of Fashion," is being held at Galliera Palace.

The retrospective of all the museum's activities during the past 15 years does not pretend to be an all-encompassing documentation, but rather an attractive, brief recapitulation with 80 costumes and 150 accessories on show.

The museum is still hampered by budgetary constraints, therefore it cannot afford to collect samples of haute couture from all the top designers. Gifts aside - which are naturally always welcome - Catherine Join-Dieterle, the director, concentrates on following the careers of six contemporary fashion designers: Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Claude Montana, Martin Margiela, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Popy Moreni and Yohji Yamamoto.

Visitors who enter the first room of the cellar storage rooms of Galliera Palace are led around a choice of elegant ensembles and wacky outfits spanning this 20th century.

Popy Moreni's brilliantly colored clown series dating from 1989 jostled with Margiela's deconstructionist visible seams, Gaultier's tiered breast-cone outfits lifted to fame by Madonna, Castelbajac's fish dress or Colonna's tight, tight black nylon tube.

Queen Sirikit

At the other end of the scale are Japanese grande dame Hannae Mori's suave ball dresses for the earnestly elegant ladies and Balmain's 1959 creation for Thailand's lovely Queen Sirikit.

There is also a poster of Wim Wenders' film on Yohji Yamamoto Carnet de Notes sur la Mode et les Villes reminding us of the media onslaught surrounding anything that has to do with fashion in this sophisticated city.

Line Vautrin's accessories such as Bluebeard's necklace or a powder box shaped like a leaf in gilt bronze and pink enamel focuses on the extra details that complete a perfect outfit. Eighty-year-old Vautrin's buttons will soon be on show at Naila de Montbrison's gallery in the 7th arrondisement which again goes to prove the importance of simply not throwing away anything apt to be declared a collectible.

Further macrame or cotton pique swimming suits from the 1950s star in the Jacques Heim collection acquired by the museum in 1987. Everyday clothing from the 18th to the 20th century continues the exhibition with christening robes, first communion outfits, wedding dresses, uniforms and even a rather amusing outfit supposed to have been worn by comic strip hero Tintin together with his stuffed toy dog. There is a purple moire long dress for pregnant women who can discreetly adjust their expanding waistline.

Shoes in all stages of hand-crafted manufacture are shown from the Mancini factory.

A Salvador Dali original handbag complete with a tiny battery driven lamp to light up the keyhole when one comes home late at night actually provoked some laughter among the first-nighters who were generally from the more serious world of haute couture themselves.

More luxurious accessories were shown in the last space where valuable original cashmere shawls, tortoise-shell combs and wildly extravagant fans testify to the fact once again that glamor was and always will be an essential part of the fashion game.