Trace the fashionable legacy of this most precious of metals
Show your Preferred card to enjoy complimentary entry to the exhibition.
A symbol of status and self-expression for millennia, gold has crossed cultures and continents. The Musée du Quai Branly — Jacques Chirac follows the golden thread through an exhibition exploring fashion and textile arts across a vast region, from the Maghreb to Japan, including the Middle East, India and China. Garments made of sumptuous materials — some dating as early as 5000 BCE — reflect gold’s luxury status and the underlying social structures and value systems of the societies that created them.
Curated by Hana Al Banna-Chidiac, former head of the Musée du Quai Branly — Jacques Chirac’s North Africa and Middle East collections in Paris, and Magali An Berthon, a professor of fashion studies at The American University of Paris, “Golden Thread: The Art of Dressing from North Africa to the Far East” unfolds across two historical and five thematic sections. It showcases a remarkable array of ceremonial and religious costumes, wedding gowns, kaftans, abayas, djellabas, saris, sarongs and other gold-infused designs.
Among the highlights is a red silk-lined uchikake, a long-sleeved bridal overkimono adorned with intricate pine tree motifs and floral medallions — a combination of silk painting, gold leaf application and couched embroidery. Another standout, an elegant 19th-century wedding dress from Cairo, with wide sleeves and a flowing train, features intricately patterned gold embroidery created using the dival technique on pale satin.
Showcasing the contemporary taste for a golden touch, the Chinese artist Guo Pei, who collaborated with the museum on the exhibition, has lent 14 haute-couture gowns that are interspersed throughout the exhibition. These include a traditional Chinese wedding dress made from gold-thread embroidery that in total represents five years of craftmanship and 30 intricate techniques. The exhibition concludes with a section dedicated to the impeccable embroidery of the Maison Lesage, the legendary atelier that has collaborated with French couturiers for over a century.
Traditional Chinese gold wedding dress by Guo Pei. © Guo Pei, China. Photograph by Minghua Li
