• The Musée des Arts décoratifs (Paris 1st) is hosting the exhibition Des cheveux et des poils from 5 April to 17 September 2023.
  • With 677 works spread over 1,200 m2, the visit shows that hair and human hair "are subjects of history," insists Denis Bruna, chief curator of the fashion and textile department.
  • Des cheveux des poils also addresses the question of trades, know-how and how technical progress has contributed to their evolution.

What do Courbet's L'Origine du monde, a copy of the humorous comic book Les Blondes and Conchita Wurst's Rise Like A Phoenix music video have in common? Answer: the exhibition Des cheveux et des poils hosted by the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris from Wednesday until September 17. "We can afford to confront a comic strip with a nineteenth-century painting," Denis Bruna, chief curator of the fashion and textile department, told 20 Minutes. I consider that everything is a document of history: you have to know how to question it, what it means, ask yourself what it allows you to learn about this or that subject. »

With 677 works spread over 1200 m2, the visit shows that hair and human hair "are subjects of history", insists Denis Bruna. The course tells the hairstyle and hair, in the West, from the fifteenth century to today. Did you know, for example, that between 1795 and 1810, a handful of women dared a short cut called "Titus"? "Its origin would be to be found in the "balls of the victims", (...) reserved for those who would have asserted a relative shortened by the guillotine, indicates a cartel contextualizing two portraits. Some demand that one has previously "had one's hair cut close to the neck, in the same way that the executioner cut it to the victims of the revolutionary tribunal."

"The exhibition is about the staging of oneself"

From sophisticated hairstyles - "à l'hurluberlu", "à la Fontange"... - from the seventeenth century to the wigs of the drag queens of Drag Race UK, from the beard sometimes symbol of virility, sometimes proscribed at court, sometimes distinctive sign of the Austrian winner of Eurovision 2014, it is the evolution of fashions, perceptions, mores and societies that is given to see. "The exhibition questions the links between the construction of appearances and the body," says the chief curator. She talks about the staging of oneself. We don't dress, we don't shave, we don't do our hair, we don't grow beards just for ourselves, but for others. »

Des cheveux des poils also addresses the question of trades, know-how and how technical progress has contributed to their evolution. At the end of the tour, some creations such as Martin Margiela's wig-jacket in tribute to Sonia Rykiel or the Black Lips wig designed by Charlie Le Mindu for Lady Gaga and his 2009 Monster Ball tour highlight the extent to which contemporary designers have appropriated hair to make fashion objects.

But it is with a return to reality and current events that the exhibition ends. On the last section of wall, she recalls that, since this autumn, Iranian women demonstrating against the Islamist regime in power have used the symbol of the cut lock of hair. "Generally in the Iranian tradition, women cut their hair as a sign of collective mourning," says Denis Bruna. It is now also a sign of protest. It was important for us to talk about history in the making. We begin the exhibition with the veil imposed on women throughout the medieval period and we end with this text. What is happening in Iran shows precisely that the stakes around hair go beyond fashion. »

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