Paris Couture: Public Tours

Paris Couture is open now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, in the Target Galleries at 2400 Third Avenue South. It's a massive look at French high fashion, with more than 80 haute couture masterpieces on loan from the Palais Galliera in Paris. The exhibition runs through January 17, 2027, so you've got plenty of time to see it.

The show covers more than a century and a half of couture, starting with the House of Worth in the late nineteenth century and moving all the way up to today's runways. You'll find pieces from some of the biggest names in fashion history—Dior, Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, and Grès are among them. A few of the standouts are Elsa Schiaparelli's shocking-pink 1938 evening cape, embroidered by Maison Lesage for Daisy Fellowes; Christian Dior's 1952 'Palmyre' dress, which was worn by the Duchess of Windsor; and a sculptural 1967 ensemble by Cristóbal Balenciaga.

There's a bit of history behind this one, too. The Palais Galliera put on an earlier version of this show in 2013, but that one stopped its story in the 1970s. This version, put together with Mia and the Saint Louis Art Museum, picks up where the other left off and carries the narrative right into the present day. Along the way, it treats haute couture as one of the defining art forms of the modern era and asks whether fashion can hold the same place in a museum as painting or sculpture.

If you want someone to walk you through it, there are public tours at 2 PM daily and 7 PM on Thursdays, running through December 20. General admission is $20, and youth 17 and under are free; Contributor Members get in free, with additional tickets $16. The tours themselves are free with the purchase of an exhibition ticket. After its run in Minneapolis, the show moves to the Saint Louis Art Museum from March 6 to June 13, 2027.