An exhibition at the Fondation Maeght revisits the radical vision of André Courrèges through the photographs of Peter Knapp, capturing the moment fashion stepped into the future.
Movement becomes image before it becomes memory. In ‘Peter Knapp: The Era of Courrèges’, presented at the Fondation Maeght, the exhibition revisits the transformation of fashion in 1965 through the photographic work of Peter Knapp and the designs of André Courrèges. On view from May 14 to November 8, 2026, at the Anny Courtade Gallery, the project brings together images, archival material and original garments to examine how a new silhouette emerged, how it was seen, and why it continues to shape visual culture today.
What Knapp captured was a shift in perception already unfolding. His photographs, originally published in ELLE in March 1965, present figures that seem to hover, suspended between gravity and possibility. Miniskirts, optical whites and architectural lines detach from convention and align with a new spatial logic. The body becomes structure, the garment becomes form, and the image becomes a tool to project a different way of living.
At the center of the exhibition, four large-scale prints expand this iconic series, accompanied by additional photographs, documents and silhouettes loaned by the House of Courrèges. Together, they reconstruct the moment described by the press as the “bombe Courrèges,” when fashion aligned with architecture, movement and modern life. The images do not illustrate the clothes; they extend them, turning photography into an active space of experimentation.
This dialogue resonates with the founding vision of the Fondation Maeght as a place where disciplines meet. Conceived by Marguerite and Aimé Maeght as a space for artists, writers and thinkers, it continues to host encounters across mediums. Here, fashion enters that conversation through a body of work that remains strikingly current, where the future imagined in 1965 still feels in motion.
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