New Acquisition: 158 Couture Designs, 1880-2008

Right now in Paris, at Les Arts Décoratifs, you can see the LACMA-organized exhibition Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915, which originally ran at LACMA in 2010. That show is centered around a major collection acquired by LACMA a few years ago; now, the museum has just made another major acquisition that picks up roughly where the last left off. We have just added 158 examples of couture objects dating from 1880 to 2008. Designers included in the acquisition include Cristobál Balenciaga, Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Madame Grès, Christian Lacroix, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Madeleine Vionnet, and many more. For the latter, we also acquired the Betty Kirke Pattern Archives of Madeleine Vionnet—patterns, photographs, research materials, and much more.

The objects are not yet on view, and won’t be right away. But in the meantime we just have to share a few fantastic highlights from the collection—just a scratch of the surface of this tremendous acquisition.