Field Trips for Fashion Heritage & Memory
As part of the Fashion Heritage and Memory course at Parsons Paris, taught by Antoine Bucher, students visited several exhibitions and the Druout auction house to witness the active process of constructing heritage and creating value for fashion in institutional spaces. Through these visits, students explored the ways in which fashion is framed, commodified, evaluated and understood across different cultural and institutional contexts.
Total by Martine Syms at the Galerie Lafayettes Foundation
The first stop was Total, an exhibition by American artist Martine Syms at Lafayette Anticipations from October 16, 2024 to February 9, 2025. The space was transformed into a hybrid store-gallery that interrogated private and public consumption practices. Syms’ work explored identity and surveillance, questioning how desires are shaped and commodified. Through a mix of cultural references, feminist history, and the “theater of the everyday,” Total invited students to reflect on how our consumption habits are both a performance and a reflection of broader societal mechanisms.
Louvre Couture: Art and Fashion at the Louvre
Next, students visited Louvre Couture, the alleged first-ever fashion exhibition at the world’s largest museum. This exhibit showcased over 100 garments from 1961 to the present, highlighting the intersection of fashion and art. Students reflected on how curatorial choices influenced the perception of fashion, raising questions about how art museums legitimize fashion and the value attached to it as an art form.
Au Fil de l’Or at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
Another exhibition visited was Au Fil de l’Or at the Musée du Quai Branly, which focused on the role of gold in textile arts across cultures. From North Africa to Asia, the exhibition featured intricate garments and ceremonial outfits, showing how gold has been used to symbolize power, wealth, and cultural heritage. Students were able to see how fashion carries deep cultural meaning and how value is embedded in both the materials and the stories behind them.
Druout Auction House
The final stop for the students was a visit to the Drouot auction house in Paris, one of the city’s most iconic public auction venues. Known for its diverse range of daily auctions, Drouot also regularly features fashion lots, offering everything from haute couture to unnamed vintage garments. However, unlike the high-profile auctions of paintings and sculptures, fashion tends to be relegated to more understated bidding processes. This contrast highlights the ongoing tension in the art world regarding fashion’s status, prompting students to consider how fashion is framed in auction houses and why it doesn’t yet receive the same level of attention as art objects.
These field trips provided a unique opportunity for students to reflect and engage with the various ways fashion’s heritage and value is constructed. By physically visiting these institutional spaces, students also viewed more practical applications of theories and concepts learned in class.