Our Project Associations, combining fashion design with a wide style array of Tsarskoe Selo, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a fascinating exhibition that runs on the second floor of the Catherine Palace’s Zubov Wing till December 2, 2018.

Following its 10th annual art and fashion show in June, when St Petersburg enjoys white nights, Project Associations summarizes its decade-long experience of collaboration between the Museum and St Petersburg’s top fashion designers in this somewhat surreal display. Titled Midsummer Night’s Dream, it reminds of paintings by Antoine Watteau and Konstantin Somov, just like the annual fashion fests in the Catherine Park remind of the bygone times of gallant courtiers.

Forty five fashion pieces and some of the rarest artifacts from the museum collection amply illustrate the Project’s idea conceived by Director Olga V. Taratynova of Tsarskoe Selo in 2009 — to bring together history and today, classical art and avant-garde.

Theater designers Yury Suchkov, Elizaveta Vasilkovskaya and Yana Glushanok, who worked on our hit exhibition Hand Fan Returns in 2014, have created display installations evoked by the Tsarskoe Selo palace interiors and park landscapes. Some of the museum’s objects and décor elements, including eighteenth-century putti and cupids, help recreate the historic settings that inspired the works of modern couturiers.