Exploring the Intersection of Fashion and Sport: at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris

Fashion's links with other disciplines offer different meanings to topics that seek to be commented on or turn out to be a comment in context. Stripped of those intersections, fashion would be clothes. Thus, the links between fashion and sport are essential to understand, for example, why we dress the way we dress, since therein lies the evolution of the contemporary wardrobe. The museum institution, far from a historicist perspective, exhibits answers and its reflection is of vital importance. “Fashion and sport, from one podium to another” is the exhibition offered by the MAD in Paris. The exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts explores the union of fashion and sport, anticipating the 2024 Olympic Games, which can be visited until next April.

The hegemonic story from the production centers on contemporary fashion replenishes the legacies of Gabrielle Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin and Elsa Schiaparelli, plus the contribution of Lacoste and Jean Patou as necessary to understand this union, practicality being the dynamic that advances the wardrobe. A jump in time links us to hip hop culture and how brands like Off-White and Balenciaga take the idea of ​​jogging and the role of sneakers to another level.

"Mode et sport, d'un podium à l'autre" at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris offers 450 garments, visual documents that include photographs, sketches, magazines, paintings, videos and sculptures that represent the level that the sport was reaching and its influence on fashion.

In the catalog that accompanies the exhibition there is research that places in the 19th century the moment of birth of sport in a modern sense - reserved for the elites - taking these meetings as spaces to show off, then it will be the fashion shows that take that place. Designed for sports, the sports garments of this period were impossible to mobilize and only around 1920, after the First World War, the sports clothing market expanded: the shapes and fabrics that dress athletes are also appropriate to make up the wardrobe. everyday life, sport being, then, a great contribution to female emancipation if we consider the role that this liberation of clothing had in our lives. “From the gym to the street, from the winners' podium to the catwalk, fashion and sport have a rich shared history that influences the way we dress today,” says Sophie Lemahieu, the curator of Fashion and Textile. in charge of the MAD's post-1947 collections.

Some moments where sport crossed with fashion
In 1919, Jean Patou designed a pleated dress for tennis champion Suzanne Lenglen. A scandal: the dress was too short for the time. Between the 1920s and 1930s, the sport was in fashion and magazines mentioned it as such. The star couturiers of that time responded to this imprint by launching styles that were more stripped of formality and privileging comfort without sacrificing chic . By 1928 the French press was already talking about sportswear . Chanel imposed the use of the jersey and couturiers such as Lanvin and Patou opened their sports lines in 1923 and 1925 respectively. In 1933, Lacoste launched the sweater. Legend has it that René Lacoste cut the sleeves off his shirt, and then they put it on sale when they developed the cotton petit piqué that guaranteed sweat absorption and let air pass through.