In Paris, MAD Honors Paul Poiret, “the First Art Director in the History of Fashion”

On Tuesday night in Paris, MAD—as Paris’s museum of decorative arts is now known—inaugurated “Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast,” the first-ever dedicated exhibition about the couturier best remembered for freeing women from corsets.

Poiret learned about couture at the house of Worth, the subject of another exhibition over at the Petit Palais. Once he struck out on his own, he became the original multi-hyphenate couturier. Poiret dabbled in music, painting, acting, and restaurants. He was the first to scout out and support promising talents, initiate collaborations with artist friends like Paul Iribe and Raoul Dufy, and launch a perfume line, which he named after his daughter, Rosine. Inspired by the Ballet Russes, he drew from across the arts for his fashion. Soon, he reached the pinnacle of fame as fashion’s first all-powerful creative director and social arbiter.

“With the coming of Paul Poiret, fashion changed completely,” Christian Dior wrote in his autobiography, Christian Dior and I, published in 1957. “Paris in 1912 was like a harem, with Paul Poiret as the powerful but kindly sultan.”

At MAD, some 550 works span his couture creations, accessories, costume jewelry, images of famous clients like Peggy Guggenheim (shot in Poiret by Man Ray), and fine and decorative arts. But it’s the dialogue with contemporary high fashion—from Dior himself to present-day—that attests to Poiret’s reach.

Alphonse Maitrepierre made this black cashmere number with a faux astrakhan effect and a sculptural collar piece by the New York-based artist Gracelee Lawrence in Poiret’s image. “What I love about Poiret is that there was something contemporary about the way he envisioned clothing on a woman’s body,” he notes.

Christophe Delliere