TOPICS: ARCHITECTURES OF FASHION in Summer 2025 (CM2091-3WK1)

This class aims to connect architecture and fashion, firstly through the buildings and structures that are necessary to put clothes and accessories on display, such as markets, bazars, boutiques, covered passages and department stores. Of course, these initial aspects of the course are designed to study and to highlight how the architecture of Paris, through its organization and its design, contributed to forge the image of a capital of fashion. Nevertheless, the aim of this class is also to help the students to forge a critical approach of this common idea. In class and through visits, the students will also be invited to discuss the way ready-to-wear and couture houses must get to grips with Parisian historical buildings or structures, and how in the context of climate change and a socio-economic crisis, those choices can sometimes become controversial, such as the organization of Louis Vuitton men’s wear fashion show of Spring-summer 2024, on the Pont Neuf. The past decades, this mixed ecosystem reorganized its ways of gathering and protecting its savoir-faire by the creation of buildings entirely dedicated to training and teaching such as the Institut français de la mode or the 19M gallery.