Weaving the future, dressing the body: the free art exhibition at JAD

Clothing is a necessary industry, but this need does not preclude beauty: fashion is an art, just like painting or sculpture. It's a living art, evolving with the times, adapting to societal and environmental imperatives. The Jardin des métiers d'art et du design focuses on these trades of the present and future, through a free exhibition presented from January 17 to April 21, 2024.

The JAD showcases the expertise of the textile world, and the challenges it faces in the coming years, with the exhibition Weaving the future, dressing the body. A range of creations by artists, craftsmen, designers and visual artists illustrate the technical nature and breadth of skills and fields that make up the world of fashion.

The JAD exhibition is divided into three acts. First, we discover designers such as Geneviève Sevin-Doerin, Valérie Mréjen, Jeanne Vicérial and Marie-Ange Guilleminot - artists, but also inventors, who have thought up new forms, new tools, unusual and unprecedented associations. Far from mass industry and fast-fashion, these pieces testify to a new sobriety, a need for timelessness and simplicity, in the face of vain excess.

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This notion of sobriety is combined with reuse, the second theme of the exhibition. Using scraps of fabric, recycling old clothes or accessories, upcycling: the fashion is forecology, for valorizing existing heritage, for upward transformation.

Finally, the exhibition ends with a look at what tomorrow's fashion might look like: more natural, more sustainable fashion, where ancestral practices and modern techniques combine to create garments, bags and accessories using totally natural materials. These are more virtuous practices, but they take nothing away from the artistic side of the industry.

Throughout the exhibition, you'll discover innovative French talent and extraordinary know-how, transforming an idea, a need, into a work of art. Fashion, art, innovation and ecology are one and the same as these textile artists unveil their creations at the Jardin des métiers d'art et du design in Sèvres.