how they influenced each other over the centuries

In Paris, there are two exhibitions dedicated to the connection between sports and fashion – “La mode en mouvement” (“Fashion in motion”) at the Gallier fashion museum and “Mode et sport, d’un podium a l’autre” (“Fashion and sport: from one podium to another”) at the Museum of Decorative Arts. A topic that seems most obvious and most relevant for about 40 years is being covered for the first time on such a large scale in Parisian museums. Repeating each other in several points, but made in completely different styles, these two exhibitions not only clearly demonstrate the victory of sport in everyday life, but also allow us to build some new connections between fashion and sport.

Text: Elena Stafieva

We owe such scope and scale, of course, to the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Paris, which turned the theme “Fashion and Sports” into a social order. And if the LVMH conglomerate concludes the largest sponsorship deal in the history of the Olympic movement with the IOC and its brands sew uniforms for athletes, develop Olympic medals, etc., then the exhibition “La mode en mouvement” becomes part of the Olympic cultural program of Paris 2024, and the exhibition “Mode et sport, d’un podium a l’autre” is made in partnership with the Lausanne Musee Olympique. And it was these exhibitions that became the first noticeable signs of the upcoming Olympics in the cultural space of Paris.

Both of them are built chronologically, but in Galliera there is more attention to the historical part, they turned out to be especially exciting in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs (MAD Paris) the entire central space is turned into a sports installation in the form of treadmills and given over to modern fashion. But together they make up a project unprecedented in its completeness and diversity, representing the interaction of sports and fashion throughout all the centuries of the existence of both. Or rather, physical activity and clothing directly and indirectly associated with it – today we completely do not take into account that not only horseback riding or cycling, but also a car or hunting at the beginning of the 20th century were considered as sports and required appropriate clothing. And we can see how, first, sportswear is separated from everyday clothing and becomes specialized, and then specialized sportswear (and with it specialized sports fibers, fabrics and technologies) literally takes over everyday clothing and becomes an indispensable part of the life of a modern person.

In this process, which stretched over several centuries, there were, of course, different stages. Here is a showcase with white dresses made of muslin from the 1780s–1790s in the Galliera Museum – it was from light, finest cotton from East India that light dresses with a more straight silhouette and closer to the natural female form were sewn; they were distant prototypes of future special clothing for physical activity, in Such was Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s portrayal of Marie Antoinette (her portrait can already be seen in MAD Paris). Or a delicate gray linen set from the mid-19th century consisting of a fluffy skirt and a blouse with wide sleeves – it’s hard to guess right away, but this is a proto-swimsuit. A heavy, shaggy fur coat, a whole load of goat and fox fur – now it is difficult to classify it as sportswear, but in 1900 it was intended for car races in low temperatures and was the predecessor of all current fleeces, membranes and Teflon.

But the most interesting thing happened between the two world wars, when the rise of sports began in its more or less modern form – football, tennis, skiing, swimming, all kinds of athletics in general – and in connection with it what can be called the first masculinization of women’s clothing ( the second will happen during the Second World War and for completely different reasons, and the third will happen in our time). At first, women timidly but consistently began to borrow sportswear from the men’s wardrobe – knitted cardigans for tennis, bloomers for cycling, breeches for golf, that is, women’s versions of all these items appeared. This can be clearly seen in the sports wardrobe of the Duchess of Murat from the 1900s to the 1920s, exhibited at Galliera: her riding boots, her hunting jackets and capes are no longer much different from men’s. All this female conquest of the male wardrobe, together with what were considered male activities, is ironically presented in the silent film “Madame fait du sport”, which is shown at both exhibitions, where a rather corpulent sports lover shows class in all its forms (including what we are now would be called exercise machines) to the frail men around her.

This process gained particular strength in swimming and skiing. Women’s and men’s swimsuits at the beginning of the 20th century quickly became almost identical, and attempts to ski in long skirts led – also quickly – to unisex ski suits, as they remain to this day.

In the post-war period, fashion finally absorbed everything that was associated with aristocratic and bourgeois sports – tennis, golf, cars – and knitted cardigans or overalls decisively ceased to be perceived as something sporty. But the final victory of sportswear occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, when real mass sports, bodybuilding and aerobics appeared and the idea of ​​fitness took hold – that is, playing sports not for the sake of sports, but for the sake of improving your body. And along with it, new ideals of physical beauty appeared, and all this clothing – bright spandex leggings, sweatpants and sweatshirts, sweatshirts, bicycle shorts – came out of gyms and gyms onto the streets of the whole world. And of course, the apotheosis of all this is sneakers: a wall with sneakers, both original and made together with fashion brands, adorns both exhibitions.

The latest chapter in this expansion is the surfer and skater cultures, which, unlike the aforementioned tennis, golf, etc., were perceived as non-conformist. It was in this capacity that they were adopted by luxury, which sought to penetrate the youth environment – and we see Louis Vuitton skateboards, surfboards and wetsuits from Chanel and Hermes at exhibitions.

But what exactly is happening with fashion? And we don’t mean the sports lines that Lanvin, Patou and Schiaparelli have produced since the twenties, and not the sports brands in their origin made by the French tennis player Rene Lacoste or the Italian tennis player Sergio Tacchini, and not even the fact that among the creators of fashion brands were Olympic-level athletes, such as Emilio Pucci and Ottavio Missoni. No, we are primarily talking about how fashion, not directly related to sports, interacted with it throughout the 20th century, along what lines the main influence passed.

Both exhibitions try to talk about this in some detail, and especially “Mode et sport” at MAD Paris. Of course, there are the obvious things, such as moon boots or puffy ski jackets, and in general all the creativity in this genre from companies like Moncler. In MAD, in addition, there is also a whole podium with samples of clothing from various Olympic teams, on which the main fashion designers worked. There are things that are less obvious, but quite expected, like the display of jumpsuits in Galliera – from Lanvin of the 1940s and Courreges of the 1970s to Balenciaga of 2003. But the most interesting things are found where, it would seem, there is no trace of sports. For example, Comme des Garcons’s 1990 nylon jersey Galliera ensemble was a stretchy, body-hugging dress layered with a few colorful T-shirts. Rei Kawakuba has never been particularly keen on sports, but the thin, stretchy fabric, bright colors and draperies of this multi-layered composition clearly show the influence of sportswear – bright leggings and aerobics swimsuits, although none of this is directly used here. In the same window, a sequined Chanel jacket from 1991 with a zipper and an asymmetrical Martine Sitbon dress from 1997 with figured cutouts on the back are on display – both of them also show the influence of new sports technologies that made it possible to create these comfortable, flexible fabrics, and all sorts of purely sports fashion, be it gymnastics or figure skating.

This is also on the treadmill with mannequins in fashion outfits from the last 50 years or so at MAD. Among the completely predictable oversized sweatpants and hoodies of Balenciaga and Off-White, there are deconstructed Comme des Garcons FW 1998 items, which, if you went through the entire exhibition from the very beginning, the eye can already discern the Amazon of the turn of the last century. Or the outstanding Alexander McQueen SS 1992 look – an anatomical leather corset to the very neck with large stitches across the torso and a skirt made of many lace frills – in which one can guess a fencing suit from a century ago. It is this direction that, perhaps, will ultimately win over the in-line production of hoodies and sweatpants under luxury brands – at least the latest Miu Miu collection, where the elastic bands of sports briefs with laces are built into a variety of combinations of things, most of them not at all sporty, gives such hope.

---

Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram