Leatherwork by late Y/Project founder Yohan Serfaty takes center stage at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris until March 21, connecting historical garments with contemporary creations from the ANDAM Awards.
- The showcase runs until March 21 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
- It pairs Serfaty’s archival pieces with medieval art, early Renaissance items, and works by recent ANDAM Award winners.
- Nathalie Serfaty established an endowment fund to support young designers using proceeds from an archive sale of around 300 pieces.
Yohan Serfaty viewed leather as a second skin that operated simultaneously as protective armor and a personal archive. His sister Nathalie Serfaty said that the material represented his creative essence and served as a tangible way to process the illness that caused his death in 2013, WWD reported.
That perspective surfaces directly in the Parisian museum showcase titled “Hommage to Yohan Serfaty.” On a crocodile-skin jacket displayed in the galleries, visible markings trace the physical toll of surgical operations he underwent. Serfaty examined that personal chapter through a project titled “Y.Scar,” manipulating the punctuation to pivot between the English words scar and care.
The exhibition places three rooms of medieval art and early Renaissance artifacts in direct dialogue with the designer’s dark aesthetic. Curated by Sophie Lemahieu, the rooms blend leather-and-silver jewelry among gilded icons and carved ivory religious scenes. A leather-and-knit design from the fall 2012 Catharsis collection rests flat, invoking a recumbent figure.
That Gothic sensibility drew heavily from Hollywood cinema, heroic epics, and Arthurian legends. In the Raoul Duseigneur room, which replicates a late 15th-century bedroom, a slim crocodile coat designed by Serfaty rests near contemporary silhouettes created by EgonLab and Marine Serre, alongside a hat by Ruslan Baginskiy, a bag by Maeden, and footwear by Vicente Rey.
The current museum display and collaboration with the ANDAM Awards grew out of Nathalie Serfaty’s broader mission to protect her brother’s extensive archive. She donated a dozen pieces divided into four distinct silhouettes to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, alongside a similar quantity to the Palais Galliera.
Proceeds from a 2025 sale featuring approximately 300 archival pieces established the Yohan Serfaty endowment fund. “I wanted this to be a fund dedicated to young creation, so there could be a transmission of his work, not a story of mourning,” Nathalie Serfaty told WWD.
ANDAM founder Nathalie Dufour expressed deep emotion when the designer’s sister first approached the organization to collaborate on preserving creative patrimony. “Yohan was very attached to emerging design so it felt resonant to put his work in dialogue with our former winners,” Dufour told WWD.
The museum exhibition marks only the initial phase of broader initiatives supporting emerging talent. Michaël Serfaty, the designer’s older brother, curated the 11th edition of the Bizaphoto fanzine as a dedicated tribute to Yohan, extending the mission of creative transmission beyond the boundaries of fashion.
