Fashion’s Favorite Museums — From Famous Institutions to Lesser-known Gems
The Louvre’s first fashion exhibition — titled “Louvre Couture: Art and Fashion — Statement Pieces” and on display through July 21 — highlights the fact that museums make marvelous mood boards, and provide inspiration galore.
To wit: WWD Weekend asked an array of designers during the recent menswear and couture shows in Europe to name their favorite museum in the world, revealing a mix of famous institutions and many lesser-known gems:
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Giorgio Armani
“There are two places that hold a special place in my heart. One is in my hometown of Milan. It is the Pinacoteca di Brera, built by Piermarini and located in the Palazzo di Brera, that also hosts the Botanical Garden, the Astronomical Observatory and the Academy of Fine Arts. It is home to masterpieces by great painters such as Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Raffaello, Mantegna and Piero della Francesca, as well as Hayez’s iconic ‘The Kiss.’ The Pinacoteca and its treasures are my neighbors in an area that preserves the blend of aristocratic elegance and popular charm that is one of Milan’s most enchanting qualities.
“Another museum I like very much is 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo, envisioned by Issey Miyake and designed by Tadao Ando, the architect behind my Armani Teatro. I’m fascinated by the architecture of the museum, which is nestled into a wedge of earth, giving it a unique and striking character. It also hosts extraordinary design and art exhibitions, the kind that only the Japanese can come up with.”
Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior
“My favorite museum is the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna in Rome. I remember I used to go there after school and I was so fascinated by the museum’s iconic director Palma Bucarelli. My other favorite is the Brooklyn Museum in New York. It has been a formative place in my adult life and it continues to be.”
Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent
“The MoMA in New York, because every time I go there, I’m always impressed by the exhibitions. In Paris, we have amazing museums, but somehow I rarely go to them because it’s my city. In New York it’s a way to become more aware of culture and exhibitions that I should see.”
Rick Owens
“Tate Modern, for the proportions of the rooms, the scale of the rooms, the materials, the way it was updated and modernized. I like the modern industrial proportions.”
Nigo, Kenzo
“Kawai Kanjiro’s House. This is a really old, Japanese-style house, which has been transformed into a museum. I go there every time I’m in Kyoto. Kanjiro was a ceramic artist and I really like to see his atelier as it is.”
Giambattista Valli
“I cannot decide between The Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad and Palazzo Massimo, The National Roman Museum. In my head, there is a constant conversation between the two.”
Peter Copping, Lanvin
“The V&A still does it for me every time. I was there not so long ago, and went through the plaster room and the British rooms. You know, the first thing you see when you go in is the Henry VIII writing casket. So it doesn’t get much more amazing with that.”
Alexandre Mattuissi, Ami Paris
“The Dia Beacon. It’s so big, so quiet. It’s like two hours from New York by train. You arrive in this little village, you walk a little bit and you alight on this museum, which is so big. I’ve been there two or three times, and every time I’m nearly alone in the museum.”
Brunello Cucinelli
“There is no doubt about the beauty and uniqueness of the Louvre or the Uffizi but given my education and my affection for the classic Greek culture, I would say the National Museum in Athens.”
Alessandro Sartori, Zegna
“The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid for Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica.’”
Norbert Stumpfl, Brioni
“The one I love the most is the Palazzo Altemps in Rome. It’s a museum which is very stylish with Roman, Greek and Egyptian antiquities. The museum is next to Piazza Navona in a 15th-century palazzo. The rooms are not crowded and there are hardly any tourists who go there. A real gem in Rome.”
Kim Jones
“I’d have to be biased and say The Charleston Trust, because I’m the vice president — of course. It’s a place of constant inspiration for me. My whole collection will go there and I’ll build the Virginia Woolf Library there as well. I’ve been doing things with Sotheby’s, with Bloomsbury as well. It’s helping find pieces for the trust that they’re looking for. Things come out of the woodwork if you talk about it and show it, so it helps.”
Adeju Thompson, Lagos Space Programme
“I would say my favorite museum is probably the V&A, because obviously I’m really into decorative arts. But also the Museum of Decorative Arts here in Paris, I was really obsessed with this. I love spaces where I can study the craftsmanship of clothes, things from the 18th century [and] 19th century. That really informs me. André Leon Talley talked about this idea of exposing yourself to things that you admire, and building a vocabulary from that, so I love to go to a lot of decorative museums that have a lot of furniture, textiles, paintings, just craftsmanship. I always find myself going to these sorts of museums, but any museum really to look at art, contemporary art. I’m generally just hungry to soak up beautiful things.”
Jung Wook-jun, Juun.J
He names Leeum Samsung Museum of Art as his favorite. Consisting of two parts, one dedicated to traditional Korean art and the other to contemporary art, it is located in the Hannam-dong area of Seoul. “It’s so poetic,” he adds.
Massimo Giorgetti, MSGM
“The Tate Modern in London. Every time I visit the city, I never miss the chance to go there on a Sunday morning, enjoy its architecture and soak in the energy of the area around it. It’s a museum where there’s always something amazing to see, like the ‘Electric Dreams’ exhibition, which explores tech art from the pre-internet era.”
Yusuke Takahashi, CFCL
The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa in Japan because “it opened in the 2000s when I was a student, and I have visited it very regularly.” He lauds the contribution to the development of Japanese contemporary art of the museum’s director Yuko Hasegawa. “The content of ‘Dancing With All: The Ecology of Empathy,’ which she is currently curating, is also impressive, with a powerful display of works that are timely and attract visitors,” he adds. Takahashi also recently designed uniforms for the institution’s staff and docents.
Guillaume Henry, Patou
“That’s really complicated — I love them all, absolutely all; I’m an absolute museum fan. In Paris, there are so many that are a bit secret, which I love even more.” The first two that came to mind were the Gustave Moreau museum in Paris and Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna in Austria’s capital, home to the most important and largest collection of Dutch Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Kiko Kostadinov
While Kiko Kostadinov mostly heads to galleries for his art fix these days, he says he enjoyed going to Tate Modern in his early days in London — “but I haven’t committed to that in a while, you need a half-day,” he admits — and also names the Bourse du Commerce.
Feng Chen Wang
Her favorite is the Saatchi Gallery. “It’s congruent with what I love as well,” she says. “Contemporary and creativity that starts from a young age.”
Charles Jeffrey
“My favorite museum — and it might sound a bit cliché — is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I just had so many amazing experiences as a young person traveling there.” Another art-centric favorite for the London-based designer is the White Cube gallery, “a total gem” where he first discovered the work of Gilbert and George after moving to London in 2007.
Viktor & Rolf
Viktor Hosting and Rolf Snoeren, the design duo behind Viktor & Rolf, name Japan’s “art islands” Teshima and Naoshima. “They were amazing, really fantastic,” Snoeren says. “There are a few monumental works in the public space that are very impressive.”
Kévin Germanier
He cites the Musée Suisse de la Mode in Yverdon, thanks to its permanent collections spanning from the 18th century to the present day. It also houses the archives of Germanier’s forerunner, Paris-based Swiss designer Robert Piguet, whose fashion house was also behind famed scent Fracas.
Paul Smith
In 2013, the designer was tapped to art direct an exhibition at Musée National Picasso, in Paris — and loved every minute. “They said they were looking for something very different to what has been done before in that museum or in any museum. What a humbling task and wonderful, amazing and quite overwhelming request.”
Pierre Mahéo, Officine Générale
The Louvre. “I love the inside and the outside. It’s so grandiose. Built three centuries ago, it’s still standing and evokes such emotion.”
Véronique Nichanian, Hermès
The Louvre and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. “I was recently in Chicago and visited. Wow — I loved it.”
Jerry Lorenzo, Fear of God
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. “My grandfather played in the Negro Leagues, so the museum is rich with family history,” says Lorenzo whose grandfather, Lorenzo Manuel, was a pitcher for the Atlanta Black Crackers. Lorenzo also says Jackie Robinson started his career in the Negro Leagues, led the way for Black players in Major League Baseball and the U.S. Civil Rights movement.
Yohji Yamamoto
“My favorite museum depends on who is showing there at any given time. I am busy, and because of the war [in Ukraine] it takes more than 15 hours to fly to Europe, which means I have to be very selective about which exhibitions I see.“
Simon Holloway, creative director, Dunhill
“The ones that feel special to me are the smaller-scale museums such as the Neue Galerie New York. It’s a beautiful mansion, and it has a very narrow curation of pieces of the Wiener Vorst?dte, including ones by Egon Schiller and Gustav Klimt. I also love the coffee shop, the book shop and the gift shop there.
“And in London, my absolute favorite museum is the Sir John Soane’s Museum. Again, it’s all filtered through the eye of a collector. His collection of antiquities and art is all housed in his original townhouse in London, and they give tours by candlelight. It’s really an incredible experience and something very, very unique in the world.”
Mihara Yasuhiro, Maison Mihara Yasuhiro
“The Whitney Museum in New York, because when I visited this museum, they had an exhibition that focused on contemporary art. When I was an art student in the late ’80s and ’90s, contemporary art was very present everywhere. That’s why I love contemporary art.”
Gherardo Felloni, Roger Vivier
“My favorite museum in the world is probably the archeological museum of Naples, because it’s one of the most beautiful collections of marble and statues from the ancient world. When I see this museum, I say, ‘Oh my god, it’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.’ There’s a sense of beauty in the statues, but at the same time there’s a sense of sadness. All this stuff was underground, forgotten for hundreds of years.”
Emeric Tchatchoua, 3.Paradis
“I think my favorite museum in the world is the Met, there are so many historical pieces you can see there as a fashion fanatic. I really enjoy discovering new stories every year about costume in the Met. There is also a gallery called Stems Gallery in Brussels that I love, they always show emerging artists, and it’s totally in line with my aesthetic.”
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