PARIS – On the opening night of Paris Fashion Week, nearly 300 guests gathered not for a runway show but for a splashy dinner at the foot of the Winged Victory of Samothrace for the second annual Grand Dîner du Louvre.

“I think it’s already a success when you can have all the fashion houses all together in the same room, which is hard,” said Simon Porte Jacquemus. “It’s important when all of fashion is together, because we are strong and we are a big part of the culture.”

The evening is positioned as a convergence of fashion and art, bringing the city’s cultural soft power players together to benefit the Louvre. This year’s edition, held in the Daru Gallery under the theme “Le Louvre, la nuit,” raised 1.6 million euros for the preservation of the museum’s heritage.

The patron list reads like a catalog of the luxury world. Chanel, Cartier, Christian Dior Couture, Louis Vuitton, LVMH, L’Oréal, Lancôme, Moët Hennessy, Puig, Van Cleef & Arpels and Nike are among the sponsors, alongside technology and finance names including Snapchat, AI behemoth Anthropic, and philanthropy power couple Christine and Stephen Schwarzman, the former chief executive officer of Blackstone. The gala is backed by founding partner Visa, which has also committed to supporting the event for the next three editions.

Jacquemus also participated in last year’s “Louvre Couture” exhibition, which brought contemporary fashion into the museum. That show is now traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with additional cities to come. The international interest signals fashion’s export value, as well as its elevation in the eyes of both cultural institutions and consumers.

“I think people are really interested to see fashion in a new light, not only in boutiques,” he added. “They look at it as pieces. My dress is a boule of metal and it’s more about savoir-faire, and people are looking at it in the way of art.”

The Louvre’s own expansion into fashion extends that line of thinking.

Marine Serre, who unveiled a five-piece upcycled couture capsule created in collaboration with the museum earlier in the day, represents the next phase of that relationship.

The partnership sprouted from last year’s event and will grow into a full collection to be sold in the museum’s boutique next month. That follows a collection of pieces from Agnès B., released last November.

The collaboration is part of a broader push by the Louvre to work with fashion brands, designers and artists. Instead of simply licensing its logo, the museum aims to create projects around specific artworks or themes, giving younger shoppers a more approachable way to connect with its collection.

For the gala, Serre dressed Spanish actress Ester Expósito in one of the couture pieces – a gown composed of 600 upcycled paintbrushes that read as feathers on the high-necked dress.

In a further act of synergy, Serre also released her own collection earlier in the day, titled “Grace of Time.”

“It’s really about taking time and fashion as an art,” she said of her ready-to-wear line.

Diane Kruger arrived in Iris van Herpen, describing the swooping gown as “like an art piece.”

Kruger acknowledged that the Louvre event has been dubbed the French Met Gala. “I love going to the Met, of course,” she said. “But there’s the Mona Lisa here, and it’s tough to find a better backdrop than the Pyramide du Louvre.”

The former model reflected on the enduring ties between fashion and art. “At the best of times, fashion is what inspires art and vice versa. I certainly felt like that when I was a young model for every fashion story I ever did. Still to this day, I remember as a teenager the Peter Lindbergh alien story with Helena Christensen. Those memories are very vivid. And I wish that could happen again,” she said. Alas, print has mostly been replaced by TikTok.

Kruger has been shooting her new AppleTV series “La Décision” in Paris. In the show, she plays a fictional first lady of France and has been taking in some grand settings.

“I’ve been to the Palais de l’Élysée and all these cultural institutions — so this feels like my home,” she said, adding that her final day of filming on Wednesday will free up her schedule just in time for the rest of fashion week.

Anya Taylor-Joy made sure to have her phone in hand to document the special after-hours access to the museum, angling for the occasional selfie. She joked that she is not a “picture girl” – but after posing up a storm for WWD on the grand staircase she clarified: “Because I do it for work, I never think to take them myself. But it’s nighttime at the Louvre. So why not?”

Taylor-Joy said she hasn’t visited the museum since she was a child. “I’ve been wanting to come for ages, but usually fashion week is so chock-a-block that it’s difficult to find museum time.”

The evening’s program invited guests to wander the galleries in near-darkness, as spotlights illuminated individual works as if by moonlight.

“But have you seen the real moon tonight?” asked Taylor-Joy. “It’s the last total eclipse for a while – we should enjoy it.”

“Jonathan [Anderson] is such a master of creating experiences that are so sensory – it’s everything. I always feel like I walk out with a really beautiful memory, and that’s really a gift,” Taylor-Joy added of the Dior show earlier in the day.

Christian Louboutin said his office is just steps away. The native Parisian noted that it’s impossible to grow up in the city without the Louvre looming large. “You cannot not have a connection with the Louvre,” he said, adding that he has a habit of stopping in for brief, inspirational visits between meetings.

He was dressed to the nines and accessorized with massive metal forearm cuffs that he picked up in India, which made the outfit look like a Savile Row superhero suit.

The guest list reflected a wide swathe of fashion and film, including Tod’s Group chairman and chief executive officer Diego Della Valle, designers Jean Paul Gaultier and Iris van Herpen, as well as Catherine Deneuve, Anamaria Vartolomei, Alexa Chung and French pop star Aya Nakamura.

The artistic contributions extended beyond fashion. Filmmaker Michel Gondry created a film for the occasion, the animated short “Louvre-Moon–Love,” which follows a small pyramid that blasts off into space to find its soul satellite.

As for holding the event during fashion week, Gondry said he was somehow oblivious to the timing. Instead, he has been concentrating on writing a new film that will begin shooting in the fall.

The dinner is now part of the Federation’s official calendar, cementing its place within the industry’s most important fashion week.