Last Chance to See: "Ce Qui Se Trame" - Stories Woven between India and France.

Open until 4 January 2026, Ce Qui Se Trame: Histoires tissées entre l’Inde et la France, at the Mobilier National, Paris, offers a richly textured exploration of the creative, technical and cultural exchanges that have linked India and France for nearly four centuries. Through the prism of textiles, the exhibition reveals how materials, motifs and making traditions have travelled, transformed and endured across time and geography.

Embroiderers from Kalhath Institute, Lucknow, creating pieces by artist Pauline Guerrier, artist-in-residence at Villa Swagatam, 2025 © Pauline Guerrier.

Curated by Mayank Mansingh Kaul, with Christian Louboutin as creative director, the exhibition unfolds across seven visual chapters, each tracing a different strand of this shared history. From hand-spun and hand-woven Indian cottons that reshaped French fashion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to contemporary works produced through the Villa Swagatam residency programme, the emphasis is firmly on the handmade. Embroidery, block printing, brocade weaving and lace-making appear as practices that are still fully alive as systems of knowledge transmitted through generations, standing in resistance to today’s all-digital culture...

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Image Credits:

Lead: The Flowers We Grew - Rituals of Care (Detail), Rithika Merchant et la Chanakya School of Craft, Christian Dior Couture, 2024 © Adrien Dirand.

All further images as credited in photo captions.