Léger fashion parade !

Léger fashion parade !

The exhibition is part of a partnership launched in 2022 with the DN MADE (Diplôme National des Métiers d'Arts et du Design) show business speciality stage costume course at Les Coteaux high school in Cannes.

This winter, the museum will be decked out in its finest finery with a display of original costumes directly inspired by the work of Fernand Léger. Over-size coats with graphic and figurative compositions, ceremonial headdresses and masks borrowed from African cosmogony and the spirit of jazz, shirts and capes with geometric and abstract motifs, will make up this flamboyant haute-couture show. The fruit of the know-how and research work of DN MADE students, the textile pieces and their preparatory sketches and models will offer an original dialogue with a selection of Fernand Léger paintings and drawings from the museum's collection, all of which reinvent the language of lines and colours. 

This transition from the painter's canvas to the fabric enveloping bodies will also highlight Fernand Léger's artistic contribution to the performing arts, in particular the creation of stage sets and costumes, such as La Création du monde, Léger's avant-garde masterpiece created in 1923 for the Swedish Ballet Company. The exhibition will culminate in a public parade of new creations on Saturday 18 May 2024, as part of the European Museums Night. 

The DN MADE Mention SPECTACLE - Stage Costume speciality links artistic and technical approaches, creating a bridge between past and present. Students examine contemporary creation and historical reconstruction. The course covers all the technical, sociological, dramaturgical and aesthetic aspects of costume design, from conception to production. The course emphasises technical skills and aims to develop creativity and innovation. The skills acquired are in the fields of textiles, materials and cuts used to make a stage costume.

Parade of costumes by DN MADE students, Les Coteaux High school, in Cannes, in front of the stained glass window (detail) in the Fernand Léger national Museum, Biot. Photo © DR: musées nationaux du XX^e siècle des Alpes-Maritimes © Adagp, Paris, 2024.