Émilie Hammen appointed director of Palais Galliera
Carine Rolland, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of culture and the quarter-hour city, president of Paris Musées, and Anne-Sophie de Gasquet, general director of Paris Musées, announced the appointment of Émilie Hammen as the new director of the Palais Galliera.
A graduate of the Ecole Duperré and the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM), Émilie Hammen began her career as a stylist working with various artistic directors of ready-to-wear and haute couture houses, including Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Christian Dior. At the same time, she pursued a university course in art history, culminating in a PhD in fashion history from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2020. By closely articulating theory and practice, she has developed an original approach that contributes to the renewal of contemporary readings of fashion history. Through her publications - notably L’idée de mode, published in 2023 - and her curatorial work, she introduces new historiographical and methodological perspectives on the objects, narratives and temporalities of clothing.
Émilie Hammen also teaches history and theory of fashion at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she has held since 2023 the first research chair dedicated to the history of fashion and its heritage in a French university. Since 2014, she has also been head of fashion history at the IFM, where she has led various research projects on fashion savoir-faire with the support of Chanel and 19M.
A Franco-American national with international professional experience, she has taken part in a number of educational and cultural initiatives, most recently for the centenary of the embroidery atelier Lesage (2024), co-curating the exhibition presented at Galerie du 19M, then in Japan (Tokyo, Mori Tower, 2025).
As director of the Palais Galliera, Émilie Hammen will draw on her dual expertise in fashion, both scientific and creative. She will continue to develop the museum’s exceptional collection through an ambitious and balanced program of exhibitions, anchored in contemporary issues and attractive to visitors from Paris, France and abroad. Reaffirming the museum’s commitment to the transmission and sharing of a common heritage, Émilie Hammen’s mission will be to reinforce the singular positioning of the Palais Galliera, a museum of the City of Paris, capital of fashion, which has an ambition of excellence, inclusivity and diversity, sensitive to the memory of the place and all the people who have shaped it.
Émilie Hammen will take up her post on July 10, 2025, succeeding Miren Arzalluz, who has joined the Guggenheim Bilbao as general director.