When Old Masters Meet Couture: Fashion Takes the Gemäldegalerie Stage
Fashion and museums are intersecting in increasingly inventive ways, and Gallery Looks: Fashion Stagings in the Gemäldegalerie is the latest example. Running until May 31, 2026, the exhibition places contemporary design in direct conversation with the museum’s Old Master collection.
Highlights include Ralph Mecke’s fashion shoot staged among the gallery’s historic interiors and video documentation of Jonathan Anderson’s Dior Summer 2026 men’s show, which drew inspiration from the museum’s architecture. Designers Anne Bernecker, Plaid à Porter/Estelle Adeline Trasoglu, Karen Jessen, and Alexander Gigl contributed works that interact directly with paintings on view.
The trend of presenting fashion in museums is expanding globally. In Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts currently showcases Louvre Couture, featuring 36 ensembles from historic and contemporary houses paired with artworks from the collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art recently closed Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses, which brought Italian designers into dialogue with Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculptures, and textiles. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute is preparing its spring 2026 programme in the newly opened Condé Nast Galleries, inviting fresh discussions about the art of dress within the museum’s encyclopedic holdings.
As museums and fashion institutions experiment with how couture is displayed and experienced, Gallery Looks joins a growing conversation, showing how contemporary design can be framed alongside centuries-old works, highlighting both technique and gesture in new ways.
