Carte Blanche Palais Galliera
After venturing into the lair of a Palais Galliera under construction, a promising breadcrumb trail through the contrasting corridors naturally led me backstage to the exhibition “Gabrielle Chanel. Manifeste de Mode” exhibition to translate a new decisive chapter in the history of the museum’s transformation.
Little by little, the workers gave way to the restorers, the scaffolding to the showcases, the casted shadows to the naked mannequins, thus creating a hybrid universe, necessarily ephemeral, in which fragile and improbable encounters finished off the metamorphosis of the place. The renovated galleries of the Palais were then populated by pale suspended silhouettes, impatient or insolent naked chrysalides, ladies recalled from a sumptuous past, regaining their imperious finery to tell the world their sovereignty and to emphasize their striking topicality. Taking advantage of the mirrored canvases and other one-way mirrors as traps, I set out to capture these fugitives, freezing their silent runs towards the stage for the time it takes to release them, surprised in their secret dialogue with those who dress them. Unbridled, manipulated, neat passers-by, swapping their polyaned costumes for evening gowns, these nymphs who are waiting for the fire of the cuts curiously come to life in these new vaulted rooms, boldly defying the laws of the living and the inert, and thus enlivening a unique heritage in its lesson of uninterrupted history – that of fashion as a perpetual reconquest of elegance and a guarantee of freedom”.
Geoffroy Ménabréa
insta : geoffroy.menabrea
