Palais Galliera Explores Dissident Femininities and 19th-Century Cross-Dressing in New Exhibition

Key facts

• Exhibition title: "Un vestiaire à soi. Féminités dissidentes au 19e siècle" at Palais Galliera – Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris.
• Dates: September 26, 2026 to February 14, 2027; location: 10 avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, 75116 Paris.
• The show examines 19th-century women who adopted masculine clothing—redingotes, trousers, top hats, ties—as symbols of emancipation.
• It opens with mid-18th-century anglomania in France and riding habits (costumes d'amazone) that included hidden trousers, as in a painting by Louis-Auguste Brun of Marie-Antoinette riding astride.
• Featured figures include George Sand, who wore masculine dress for freedom and career advancement, and American Natalie Clifford Barney, a central figure of "Paris Lesbos."
• Princesse Murat attached a monocle to her top hats; the monocle was a lesbian recognition sign and the name of a lesbian club.
• Students from Université Rennes 2 created wall labels and a Fanzine de la femme dissidente.
• The 1890s bicycle craze accelerated the adoption of trousers, leading to the jupe-culotte, bloomers, and the "new woman."
• Rosa Bonheur's wardrobe is displayed almost in full for the first time; she was the first French woman to receive the Légion d'Honneur and had police approval for her masculine attire.
• The ban on women's "travestissement" in France was only abolished in 2013.
• Anonymous photographs of lesbian couples from 1880 to 1914, from three private collections and the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York, are shown and the public can contribute family photos to a database.