One Exhibition, Three Centuries of Fashion

The fashion ideal is a constantly shifting notion, reflecting historical and social mores. “Fashion Forward: Three Centuries of Fashion (1715–2015),” at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris (April 7 through August 14), takes us chronologically through 300 emblematic men’s, women’s, and children’s silhouettes. Selected from the museum’s formidable national collection, the looks include whalebone stays, panniers, hoop underskirts, corsets, and bustles. In an effort to free exhibition mannequins from their frozen poses, Pamela Golbin, the museum’s chief curator of fashion and textiles, tapped the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon to arrange them in ways that convey how people moved and interacted in period clothes. Wheeldon, who won a Tony award for his Broadway adaptation of An American in Paris, has also choreographed nine films for the exhibition, featuring dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet. “Without bodies, clothes don’t work,” Golbin says, noting the garments’ impact on posture, attitude, and mobility—both social and physical. “The history of fashion is also a history of the body.”