Fashion: the 18th century, a fantasized legacy.

More than seventy silhouettes at Galliera

Fashion: the 18th century, a fantasized legacy opened at Palais Galliera, the fashion museum of Paris, from 14 March to 12 July 2026. It shows more than seventy silhouettes, with accessories, textiles, prints, graphics and photographs.

The subject is not eighteenth century fashion on its own but its afterlife. The exhibition follows how women's fashion of the period has been reinterpreted over three centuries, from the Enlightenment itself to today.

The Enlightenment, as the museum describes it, was a time of varied silhouettes, rich fabrics, and exuberant accessories and hairstyles. That is the first material. The rest of the show traces how it has been taken out and used again.

The exhibition is curated by Émilie Hammen, with Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, who looks after the museum's seventeenth and eighteenth century dress, assisted by Alice Freudiger.

Marie Antoinette's corset

At the heart of the show is a rare object: the corset of Queen Marie Antoinette, made around 1770 to 1780. The museum states it is shown as an exception, because it is so fragile.

A corset is the innermost layer of dress. It is not seen when the wearer walks out. Yet it decides the figure: waist, chest, back, how one stands. Every layer of flowered silk above rests on that structure.

Placing this real corset among later interpretations is a clear choice. It gives visitors a fixed point. Here are the actual measurements, cloth and stitches of a body that lived. Everything around it is how later generations looked back at that body.

Marie Antoinette may be the most reimagined figure of the century. Her name is tied to luxury, to dress, to a tragic end. The corset is silent. It only tells that she had a waist, a back, a way of standing.

From couture to popular culture

The exhibition's main argument lies in the years after the Second World War. French couture then sought legitimacy in historical technique. The pleating, the structure of skirts, the handling of silk from the eighteenth century became a source the houses leaned on.

From there, eighteenth century aesthetics became a visual code taken up by popular culture. It is recognised at once: tall hair, a wide skirt, a beauty spot on the cheek. The exhibition argues that this heritage grew into an aesthetic of its own, no longer needing the real century to exist.

Contemporary designs in the show come from Chanel, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Christian Lacroix, Vivienne Westwood and Dries Van Noten. Each borrows something different: a skirt shape, a motif, a way of wearing accessories.

Today the code travels further still. The exhibition speaks of kitsch, camp and queer sensibilities, where the eighteenth century is borrowed to play, to exaggerate, to be free. A 2021 image of Utica Queen, Ethan Mundt, is one example in the show.

Why a century needs imagining

One might ask: if most of the eighteenth century we see is fantasy, what does this exhibition tell? Perhaps: about us. Each era chooses a past to wear again, and the choice says more about that era than about the past.

Postwar couture needed long roots. Cinema needed a luxurious setting easy to recognise. Drag needed a shape big enough to exaggerate. The eighteenth century met all three needs.

Galliera does not dismiss these fantasies. It sets them side by side, beside the real object, and lets visitors see the distance. For more on how eighteenth century clothes caused scandal in their own time, read about Tenue correcte exigée at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.