Christian Lacroix at the
Musée Réattu

Few designers are as inseparable from their hometown as Christian Lacroix is from Arles. This summer, the Musée Réattu pays tribute to one of the city’s most celebrated creative figures with two major exhibitions that reveal a deeply personal side of the renowned couturier—not through haute couture, but through drawing and photography.

Opening on 4 July 2026 and running until 4 October 2026, Christian Lacroix: Dessins, gribouillages et graffitis and Christian Lacroix: Photography Collector invite visitors into the creative world that has shaped more than five decades of artistic practice. Rather than presenting finished fashion collections, the exhibitions focus on the ideas, observations and visual instincts that have always existed behind them.

For Lacroix, drawing has never been a preparatory exercise—it is the foundation of his imagination. The exhibition gathers sketches spanning nearly seventy years, from childhood drawings created in Arles during the 1950s to fashion illustrations, theatre costume designs, book projects and unpublished notebooks from his personal archives.

Together they reveal an artist whose curiosity extends well beyond fashion into history, architecture, literature and everyday life.

Presented alongside these works is Photography Collector, an intimate selection from Lacroix’s personal photography collection. Built over several decades through friendships, commissions and personal discoveries, the exhibition demonstrates his enduring fascination with the photographic image and its dialogue with design, memory and storytelling.

Rather than documenting fashion alone, the collection reflects the breadth of his cultural interests and his lifelong engagement with visual culture.

The exhibitions carry particular significance in Arles. Long recognised as one of France’s cultural capitals and home to the internationally renowned Les Rencontres d’Arles photography festival, the city has profoundly influenced Lacroix’s creative identity.

Raised among the Roman monuments, Provençal traditions and vivid visual heritage of Arles, he has frequently cited the city as the source of his aesthetic vocabulary. Returning to the Musée Réattu represents both a homecoming and a reflection on a lifetime dedicated to artistic creation.

More than a retrospective, the exhibitions present Christian Lacroix as a multidisciplinary artist whose practice extends beyond the runway. They remind visitors that fashion begins not with fabric but with observation, drawing and imagination.

At a time when contemporary culture often celebrates the finished object, the Musée Réattu instead turns attention to the creative process itself—the quiet sketches, visual notes and collected images that ultimately shape an enduring artistic legacy.

For visitors to Arles this summer, the exhibitions offer a rare opportunity to encounter the private creative universe of one of France’s most influential designers, in the city where his story first began.