“Each gesture, each undertaking, each result is the manifestation and the challenge of a fashion system that we want to examine elsewhere. Wishing to put together a fashion collection, we have created it in a dance studio. Wishing to present a fashion show, we have programmed it outside – outside traced circuits, outside fashion. Wishing to produce and disseminate this collection, we have organised a performance showroom where what is for sale is not perhaps the actual garment. Neither a brand nor a label, this collection is an “S.O.S.” to the fashion world. It has recourse to the “petites mains”, those skilled workers, men and women alike, who displayed their talents at famous fashion houses. It calls on our fashion memories, it invites an art of appearance within which gestures, words and dress are already costumes. The result is a collection of souvenir clothes, of objects, dress and body-segments where not only the official, but also the intimate and everyday history of fashion acts like a creative material.”
Olivier Saillard 

Source: programme of the CND - Updating March 2017

Olivier Saillard was the director of the Palais Galliera (Paris Fashion Museum) until 2018. A famous fashion historian, he has been the curator of a large number of successful exhibitions such as Alaïa, followed by Jeanne Lanvin at the Palais Galliera, Paris Haute Couture at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris, Madame Grès, la couture à l’œuvre at the Bourdelle museum, Andy Warhol et la mode at the Musée de la Mode de Marseille and at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Museum of Decorative Arts): Christian Lacroix, histoires de mode – Yohji Yamamoto, juste des vêtements – Sonia Rykiel, Exhibition – Couturiers Superstars, etc. He is the author of a complete Histoire idéale de la mode contemporaine (Ed. Textuel). Award winner of the Villa Kujoyama, he conducts a poetic work presented in the form of performances. As part of the Paris Festival d’Automne, he created with Tilda Swinton three performances: The Impossible Wardrobe (2012), The Eternity Dress (2013) and Cloakroom (2014). In 2015, Models Never Talk, presented in New York and then at the CND, recreates the memories of seven models invited to come on stage. More recently, he presented at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris Modern Art Museum) a performance featuring Charlotte Rampling and Tilda Swinton, inspired by images taken from the collections of the Maison européenne de la Photographie.

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).