The young fashion museum's programming followed current events, so in 1990 we proposed to invite the Maison Balmain.
Erik Mortensen, Norwegian and former assistant to Pierre Balmain, was then artistic director of this emblematic Maison.
By a happy coincidence, that year Marseille was celebrating the tercentenary of the Norwegian consulate!
So it was a fabulous opportunity to combine history, both past and present, with fashion at the center of the celebration.
Together with Erik Mortensen and his assistant Hervé Pierre Braillard , we chose the Palais Longchamp as the venue for an original exhibition.
Erik and Hervé-Pierre will go into the museum's storerooms with Marie-Paule Vial, chief curator, and Catherine Ormen, our curator, to select works and then arrange them like elegant visitors in front of the paintings.
I remember two models in particular:
a theatrical black and greige ensemble that was at one with the fresco painted by Michel Serre (on the great plague of 1720 in Marseille), and this sublime embroidered dress in black velvet and coral taffeta, frozen on a step of the grand staircase facing the fresco Marseille colonie grecque by Pugis de Chavanne.
It was also an opportunity to present all 50 silhouettes from the haute couture collection to the Marseilles public, just a few days after the Paris show. Such was its success that the Balmain exhibition had to be extended for several weeks!
