In 2019, the Maison Mode Méditerranée is changing its program in response to current events. At the request of President E. Macron, Marseille will host the Mediterranean Summit.
An opportunity for MMM to promote and illustrate the themes of youth, mobility and training around the young fashion companies that are the 2010/2019 winners of the OpenMyMed Prize competition.
Training is the cornerstone of the Open MyMed Prize competition, with each brand working with recognized experts in their field.
This privileged relationship enables them to analyze their day-to-day lives as entrepreneurs and creators of collections to be produced and distributed, and to set achievable targets.
We turn to Xavier Rey, Director of the Museums of Marseille, and Marie-Josée Linou, Chief Curator of Heritage, Director of the Pôle des Arts Décoratifs at Château Borely, to co-organize the exhibition Opus sur la création de Mode en Méditerranée.
Among the 104 winning brands, 30 from 10 countries, France and the Mediterranean were chosen. We asked Marseille-born couturier Yacine Aouadi and Matthieu Pabiot, President of the Maison de Couture, to showcase the creative ferment of his generation.
Fashion expert Laurence Donnay is entrusted with a remarkable study of Mediterranean Style. The 30 international prizewinners she interviews "recognize the existence of a Mediterranean fashion influenced by their travels, their memories, their personal emotions... They evoke a cosmopolitan, international style, rather than one confined to a single geography...".
Laurence Donay shares this question: rather than "current", wouldn't it be more accurate to speak of a "Mediterranean character", born in different regions, but built on a shared identity and values... a Méditerranéité.
It's an opportunity for the Musée Borely's Fashion Department to occupy all the spaces. Yacine Aouadi and Matthieu Pabiot return to a Museum they know well, having exhibited their first Haute Couture collection, 13015 hommage à ma Ville, in 2016, as part of our OpenMyMed festival. This time, they offer us an artistic duo and invite the public to join them on the theme of Festivités en triptyque.
The Galerie Mode takes on the air of a ghost's ball, where creations, mainly from the MMM archives, twirl around, embodied by a spirit of transmission: that of the children of the Mediterranean who became great couturiers: Azzedine Alaïa, Yves Saint Laurent, Paco Rabane, Christian Lacroix...
On the second floor, a huge "pièce montée", tagged by Neur_1, pays homage to Marseille's urban culture, open to a contemporary cosmopolitan Mediterranean, represented by 30 never-before-seen silhouettes from the various collections. The "editorial" staging refers to the interactions that link designers to fashion magazines, and moves us away from museum curation.
The graphic design studio hangs the photos taken by Grec Gex for the catalog.
A sublime construction, sober in its architecture but infinitely audacious in its height, takes its place in the grand salon. 7 Haute Couture pieces signed Yacine Aouadi bear witness to a perfect mastery of cut, volume, the nobility of fabrics and embroidery.
The large library at Château Borely plays host to two sublime silhouettes by guest designers from the 2017 and 2018 OpenMy Med Festival. One, by Simon Porte Jacquemus, an ambassador for Provence, whose pastoral code he reinvents for his collection of santons de Provence, and the other, by designer Christelle Koché, whose le Sud Bébé collection reflects her cultural vision of Marseille as a gateway to the world.
Opus on fashion design in the Mediterranean is awarded the Presidential label, Union des deux rives sommet de la Méditerranée.
It's a recognition we share with the Direction des Musées de Marseille, the Château Borely Fashion Department, their teams, the directors of Maison Mode Méditerranée and our employees.
(photos: Baptiste Le Quiniou)
