Dior Paris fashion exhibition breaks 112-year record

PARIS - AFP

More than 700,000 people flocked to a record-breaking Paris exhibition dedicated to the Christian Dior French fashion house, its organizers said on Jan. 8.

The six-month-long show which ended on Jan. 7. was the most popular ever held at the city's Museum of Decorative Arts, with visitors queuing for an average of four hours to see some of the luxury brand's most iconic designs.

"Christian Dior, couturier du reve" (roughly translated as "Christian Dior, Designer of Dreams") was organized to mark the label's 70th anniversary, and told the story of the brand through some 300 of its haute couture dresses worn by stars from Marlene Dietrich to Rihanna.

The museum's director David Cameo said that the turn-out was "an absolute record," the highest for a single show in its 112-year history.

It also attracted a string of Hollywood stars and top models, who were spared the queues, including Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson and Bella Hadid, some of whom are ambassadors for the brand.

But not everyone was happy with the show. The French magazine Marianne lambasted the venerable institution, which is next to the Louvre museum, for selling out.

Writer Agnes Poirier accused the museum of becoming a "shop window for commercial brands... under the cover of art," and also criticized its earlier link-up with toymaker Mattel for another hugely popular show on the Barbie doll.

However, Cameo told that the huge attendance had been a financial boon for the museum, helping it to notch up a large surplus that would "help us re-equip and pay for an overhaul of our restoration studios."

An retrospective of American fashion designer Marc Jacobs' work attracted more than 200,000 visitors to the museum in 2012, which was then a record for the publicly-funded institution.

It is hoping to follow up its success with Dior with another fashion-themed show in March, tracing the enigmatic and mysterious Belgian-born designer Martin Margiela's years at Hermes.

It will be one of two spring exhibitions in the French capital dedicated to the creator, with a retrospective of his work due to open at the Palais Galliera fashion museum also in March.

Despite breaking records, the Dior show was far from being the most popular Paris art show of 2017.

That title is held by the "Icons of Modern Art" exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, which drew 1.2 million people.

It featured the cream of the staggering collection of 250 paintings put together by collector Sergei Shchukin before the Bolshevik Revolution, which had never before been seen outside Russia.