An exhibition showcasing a collection of historic designs by legendary Parisian haute couture house Madame Gres opens in Berlin on Friday.
Twenty-five outfits owned by Berlin’s Museum of Applied Arts, or KGM, are being shown in the city’s Kulturforum building as part of an exhibition named Many Shades of Gres until Oct. 11. It’s one of the largest collections of Madame Gres’ work outside of Paris.
Madame Alix Gres was one of Paris’ most-celebrated couturières last century. She was known for her signature, sculptural draping and innovative asymmetrical gowns and designed for French cinema. Madame Gres dressed the likes of Princess Grace of Monaco, Greta Grabo, Marlene Dietrich and Jacqueline Kennedy. The designer, who worked primarily in haute couture, died in 1993 and much of her company’s archive was auctioned off.
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Berlin’s KGM obtained the Gres silhouettes from various sources, Katrin Lindemann, the museum’s curator for fashion and textiles, told WWD. Lindemann put the exhibition together along with Christian Mau de la Cerda, a fashion expert from Berlin’s University of Applied Sciences.
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Many of the looks on display come from a collection of around 1,500 fashion objects and historical costumes from two Swiss collectors, Martin Kamer and Wolfgang Ruf, that the KGM acquired in 2003; Kamer was a costume designer and Ruf ran a gallery trading historical textiles. Alongside hoop skirts and bustle dresses, the collection contained looks from the 20th century’s best-known designers, including Schiaparelli, Chanel, Lanvin, Balenciaga, Balmain and, of course, Madame Gres.
“We also looked at the provenance of the various [Gres] objects [from the Kamer-Ruf collection],” Lindemann said. “Sometimes the only information is that this came from a private individual in New York. Some [of the Gres designs] came from an auction in Paris in 1993, held by Madame Gres’ daughter, who sold off a large part of the company’s archive.”
Appearing alongside the historic looks are dozens of other items, the results of a collaboration between the KGM and students at the city’s University of Applied Sciences.
In the summer of 2024, the idea of creating work inspired by Madame Gres was presented to professors and students at the university’s school of culture and design, Lindemann said. Over three ensuing semesters, “a wide variety of things emerged,” and not just from fashion students, she said.
“Anyone who wanted to could join,” the curator said. “So, for example, communications designers were involved. Game designers supported a fashion designer in creating a virtual space, there were clothing technologists and museologists too.”
The results of the students’ work are being shown alongside the haute couture looks that inspired them. They range from a garment that began as a simple athletic jacket but, informed by the way Madame Gres worked with fabrics, ended up as a draped, gathered, oversize nylon coat, to a virtual exhibition space visitors can navigate using an X-box controller.
“The fact that [these objects] are being brought back to life in this way is simply wonderful,” Lindemann said, of the first major exhibition in Germany to feature Madame Gres’ work. “They are such amazing pieces, and above all, incredibly timeless.”