The Louvre, the world's most-visited museum, is for first time displaying haute couture gowns and accessories from fashion houses, including Chanel, Saint Laurent and Dior, next to decorative arts from Ancient Greece to France’s Second Empire.
"Paris is the capital of fashion - there is a very strong relationship between the fashion houses and Paris, and the Louvre is in the heart of Paris," Olivier Gabet, director of the museum’s decorative arts department, told Reuters at the opening of the couture exhibition.
Fashion houses have used the grounds of the Louvre for shows - but not the museum itself - and fashion designers, including Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy and Karl Lagerfeld, have long had an affinity for the museum and its collections.
But Gabet said the exhibition was "the first time the Louvre brings fashion inside the museum in this way".
A silk ball gown designed by John Galliano for Dior in 2006 sits in the centre of a room dedicated to Louis XIV, lined with ornate, gilded furniture and towering portraits of the Sun King.
"The idea of this kind of exhibit is to say 'come to the Louvre, look at the collections differently,'" Gabet said.
Home to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the Louvre has requested urgent help from the French government to restore and renovate its ageing exhibition halls and better protect its countless works of art.
• The Louvre Couture. Art and fashion: statement pieces exhibition runs until July 21.
