Sébastien Meunier, Re·Authored
Sébastien Meunier Re·Authored is a project, conceived for Villa Noailles, whose idea took shape during the development of the Spring-Summer 2027 collection. Since relaunching his eponymous label, Sébastien Meunier has reclaimed his creative territory, one collection at a time. With this collection, he goes further. Rather than isolate another facet of his vocabulary, he subjects nearly three decades of codes, silhouettes and obsessions to a candid, unsparing examination.
What has endured? What has been left behind? What was there from the first day and still carries force today? Inevitably, the inquiry extends beyond his own label to the fashion houses whose identities he helped shape: where does the language of a house end, and where does that of the designer begin? To re-author is to return to an existing work or narrative after time and experience have altered both its author and its context, and to transform it so that it may become active again. The project addresses a broader concern for fashion today: how to engage with creative legacies, including one’s own?
Villa Noailles occupies a precise, deeply personal place in the designer’s trajectory. In 1998, Sébastien Meunier presented his first collection at the Festival in Hyères and received the Fashion Grand Prix from a jury chaired by Martine Sitbon, Hussein Chalayan and Jean Colonna. The award led him to Jean Colonna’s studio, before he launched his own menswear label in 1999 and joined Martin Margiela in 2000. Hyères was also where he first met Frédéric Sanchez, beginning a creative dialogue spanning nearly three decades. Returning to the Festival with a solo exhibition in 2006, he first met Ann Demeulemeester, who would choose him as her successor a few years later. For Sébastien Meunier, Villa Noailles is a place of disruption where his work is forced, each time, to confront itself anew.
The project occupies the Villa’s guest rooms, bringing together thousands of research images and memories, a specially conceived sound composition by Frédéric Sanchez, and video installations, choreography and dance developed around the collection. An anatomical leather coat from the 1998 Hyères collection is the only archival garment on view. Rather than reconstructing a chronology, these elements form a shifting constellation of images, sound and gesture that persists and returns to the Villa, where Sébastien Meunier’s work first emerged, revealing the intangible heritage of a designer as living material.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1999, Noémie Ninot is a visual artist who lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École Duperré and, in 2025, the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, she won the 7L Photography Grand Jury Prize at the Hyères International Festival that same year. Her work, which blends photography, sculpture, and installation, explores social and intergenerational mimicry through questions of gender.
The series ‘22 Loggestraat, Zaandam’ is the third publication in the 7L Photography Grand Prix Prize Collection. Limited edition of 700 copies, accompanied by a photographic print signed by the artist.
Co-published by Éditions 7L, villa Noailles et Atelier EXB.
