Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Now on view at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast is the first major Paris exhibition devoted to a designer who reshaped the language of modern fashion. Born in 1879, Poiret began sketching for Jacques Doucet and Worth before founding his own house in 1903. Within a few short years, textiles became his weapon of revolution.
Paul Poiret and model Renée in the salons of his fashion house,1927. Thérèse Bonney (1894-1978). Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.
In 1906, Poiret famously cast off the corset, replacing stiff, structured tailoring with flowing silhouettes cut from fabrics that moved with the body. Chiffon, silk and lightweight wool were dyed in vivid shades inspired by Fauvist painting, and surfaces were enlivened with embroidery, lamé, and brocade. Poiret collaborated with artist Raoul Dufy to produce boldly patterned printed textiles that collapsed the boundaries between applied art and haute couture. He also experimented with fabric manipulation — pleating, draping, and layering — to achieve effects of volume and movement that tailoring alone could not.
Paul Poiret "La Perse" Coat, 1911. Textile designed by Raoul Dufy. Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
His appetite for textile innovation extended beyond fashion: the Martine workshop, founded in 1911, produced hand-embroidered furnishings, printed wallpapers, and woven fabrics that carried Poiret’s aesthetic into the home. At the same time, he championed sumptuous Orientalist fabrics — turbans, kaftans, and coats in rich velvets and satins — that shocked and delighted Paris society at his legendary “Thousand and Second Night” party. Here, garments were not simply clothing but a mise-en-scène of texture and colour.
Paul Poiret, Manteau du soir, Paris, 1910. Image: Les Arts Décoratifs / Christophe Dellière.
The exhibition brings together more than 550 works, from hand-finished garments and embroidered accessories to textiles, perfume bottles, and interiors. Together, they reveal the breadth of Poiret’s vision: fashion as a total environment, where every surface — cloth, wall, or skin — was subject to design. Poiret’s fabrics were never neutral backdrops; they were active agents in shaping how the body was seen and how interiors were experienced.
Paul Poiret, Robe du soir Mosaïque Paris, 1908. Image: Les Arts Décoratifs / Christophe Dellière.
Though his house closed in 1932, Poiret’s fearless embrace of textiles and surface design reverberated long after. His experiments paved the way for later designers, from Dior’s sculptural volumes to Yves Saint Laurent’s painterly fabrics. Christian Dior acknowledged it simply: “With the coming of Paul Poiret, fashion changed completely.”
Seen through cloth, colour, and embellishment, Fashion is a Feast reframes Poiret not only as the “King of Fashion” but as a master of textiles — an artist who transformed fabric into the medium of modernity.
-
Read more about Paul Poiret in THE FUTURE PERFECT: Raoul Dufy turned past grandeur into future possibilities, Selvedge Issue 126, Deco.
-
Further Information:
-
Image Credits:
Lead: Georges Lepape — Les choses de Paul Poiret vues par Georges Lepape, Paris, Paul Poiret, 1911. Credit: Les Arts Décoratifs.
All other images as credited in photo captions.