Faculty

Art and fashion historian Laurent Cotta has been Director of the Contemporary Creation Department at the Palais Galliera for 12 years. Since 2013, he has been developing the Graphic Arts Department of the museum, enriching it with the works of recent fashion illustrators.

At the Palais Galliera, he is also the curator of several exhibitions and manifestations dedicated to fashion, amongst them: Modes à Suivre (2000 and 2002), Madame Carven, Grand Couturier (2002), Sylvie Vartan, Revue de Mode (2004), Popy Moreni (2005) and the 60th anniversary of the creation of ELLE magazine exhibition at the Galeries Lafayette department store in 2005.

He also is the co-curator, with Olivier Saillard, of Madame Grès, La Couture à l’Oeuvre at the Musée Bourdelle (2011), of Le XVIIIe au Goût du Jour at the Grand Trianon in Versailles (2011) and of Madame Grès, Sculturale Mode at the MoMu in Antwerp (2013).

Cotta gave a series of courses on Contemporary Fashion for the Chair of Fashion History at the Ecole du Louvre in 2010. At the IFM, he lectured and was Director of Studies in 2011, and in 2015 he taught courses on Fashion History.

In October 2011, he gave a series of lectures about Yves Saint Laurent, commissioned by the Alliance Française, in thirteen cities in the United States and in Canada.

He is author of a monograph about Jean Charles de Castelbajac entitled “My Way”, TeNeues Publishing, 2017.