Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
An exhibition titled ‘Golden Thread: The Art of Dressing from North Africa to the Far East’, will be hosted by the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, with the collaboration of Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei. Curated by Hana Al-Banna Chidiac, former head of the North African and Middle East Heritage Unit, Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac and Magali An Berthon, Assistant Professor in Fashion Studies, American University of Paris and Associate Member of the Centre for Textile Research, University of Copenhagen, it runs from February 11 to July 6, 2025. “From the Maghreb to Japan,” says Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, “through the countries of the Middle East, India and China, the exhibition traces the thousand-year history of gold in the textile arts. A fascinating story of artistic creation, traditional expertise and technical invention.”
As early as the fifth millennium BCE, gold was used to embellish the first luxury fabrics for men of power. Over the centuries that followed, skilled weavers and craftsmen – Roman, Byzantine, Chinese, Persian and then Muslim – used the most ingenious techniques to create veritable fabrics of art where silk or linen fibres were intertwined with golden threads and lamé. “From the first ornaments sewn onto the garments of the deceased to the flamboyant dresses of Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei, from the brocade caftans of the Maghreb and the East to the silks of the Indian and Indonesian worlds to the glittering kimonos of the Edo period, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey following the golden threads,” says the host.
The exhibition is split into two historical and technical sections and five sections corresponding to five major geographical and cultural areas. Outfits in the Maghreb presents wear such as coat (caftan), tunic, trousers, and waistcoat. They testify to the cultural melting pot that characterises the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia). The region was characterised by a taste for splendour from very early on. In the 10th century, the town of Mahdia in Tunisia was famous for its fabrics woven with golden threads and silk. Two centuries later, under the Almohad dynasty, golden brocade silks were produced in the workshops in Marrakesh, Morocco, as well as in Malaga and Almeria in Andalusia.
After the fall of Granada in 1492, North African countries welcomed many exiled Andalusians, Jews and Muslims who brought with them, not only new clothing fashions, but also new weaving and gold-thread embroidery techniques. From the 16th century onwards, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire left its mark on the urban clothes of the region, inspired by styles from Turkey. Gold, luxury and pageantry in the East is the second section; it is devoted to a vast Levantine region comprising Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. With the Muslim expansion across Asia and Africa in the 7th century, a taste for luxury and rich clothing spread throughout the new empire. Under the Abbasid dynasty of Baghdad (750-1258), as well as the Fatimids (969-1171) and the Mamluks of Egypt (1250-1517), weaving workshops produced fine fabrics adorned with gold.
The luxury fabrics played an eminent role not only in Ottoman Turkey, but also in Safavid (1501 to 1736) and Qajar (1786 to 1925) Iran, as numerous Western travellers like Jean Thévenot and Jean Chardin have testified. Ceremonial dresses in the Arabian Peninsula is the third section and is dedicated to a region bordering the western shore of the Arabian Gulf. It features a selection of festive and ceremonial gowns cut from fine silk and muslin fabrics trimmed with gold thread and lamé.
“The bright outfits, influenced by traditional Indian saris, appeared, it seems, at the turn of the 1940s in southern Iraq, in the al-Bassorah region, to be precise,” Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac notes. “From there, this fashion spread to the countries along the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman). These dresses are now the primary traditional clothing for women in this region and are known as thob Hashimi, thod mufahhah or thod al-Nahal.” Draped in gold fabrics in the Indian and South-East Asian worlds is a section focusing on the art of draping, characteristic of South and South-East Asian societies. For extravagant weddings, Indian women choose gold (now as then) and drape themselves in the most sumptuous brocade saris embroidered with golden metallic threads.
In Malaysia and Sumatra in Indonesia, songket, which are long rectangles of silk woven with gold, are the attire of choice for traditional ceremonies. They are worn as a sarong around the waist, an asymmetrical wrap or as a headdress tied on the head. Finally, in Cambodia and Laos, gold is mainly used to dress members of the royal court, as well as court dancers and theatrical performers, whose glittering costumes, embroidered and woven with gold thread, evoke deities of the Buddhist and Hindu pantheons.
Gold and silk costumes in East Asia is the final section that takes visitors to China and Japan to explore the age-old history of the exceptional blend of gold and textiles. “A spectacular collection of kimonos and obi belts complete this display,” Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac concludes. From the first half of the Edo period (1603-1867), kimonos were covered with rich gold embroidery and gold-leaf motifs. The section also looks at the history of Nishijin, Kyoto's weaving district renowned for its fabrics, which are enriched with metallic gold and silver threads.
