Couturier, costume designer, illustrator, collector – Christian Lacroix is one of those rare creators whose talent effortlessly washes over the confines of any single discipline. Born in Arles, he grew up surrounded by the colors and traditions of Provence, instilling a visual sensibility that continues to this day to inform every facet of his work.

This summer, his hometown pays tribute to him with two simultaneous exhibitions at the Musée Réattu, on view through October 4, 2026. The first, ‘Drawings, Scribbles, and Graffiti’, traces more than six decades of a prolific yet intimate drawing practice, from childhood sketches through to his most recent illustrations. The second, ‘Collector of Photography’, reveals a lesser-known side of Lacroix: that of a discerning buyer who, over the past three decades, has assembled works by Sarah Moon, Annie Leibovitz, and Paolo Roversi, among many others. We met with a man whose imagination knows no bounds.

What is your earliest memory of Arles?

Crossing the bridge over the Rhône as a baby, wrapped up in my pram, on a winter’s day, with the Mistral sweeping through.

How has your relationship with the city evolved over time?

As a child, Arles was like the scattered pieces of a theatre or film set – a story waiting to be told, that stretched from Gallo-Roman antiquity to more recent memories of war and bombings. The present, meanwhile, felt difficult to decipher, to navigate. As a teenager, I began to dare to be myself, until I was ready to strike out on my own. When I moved to Paris as a young man, Arles took on a mythical status – a source of nostalgia, a saga to which I could add chapters of my own. Then, about ten years later, once I had become a couturier, it turned into a myth I told and retold almost to the point of parody, and one I only managed to free myself from once my parents and grandparents had passed away.

With them no longer present, the city suddenly felt foreign. They had been the thread that connected me to it; without that tie, I became deaf, mute, and blind to the place. Nothing looked familiar anymore because my connection to the past had disappeared.

Toward the end of my career in fashion, I found my way back here through a series of projects – almost like rites of passage – for the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival, the Musée Réattu, Abbaye de Montmajour, the Museon Arlaten, and the Roman Amphitheatre. But I never truly put down roots again. It is a bit like seeing a woman you had loved as a young girl who has since had so much work done, that she has become almost unrecognizable.

How has Provençal tradition shaped your work?

I was born into it. From the moment I opened my eyes, it was a spectacle: not only the Provençal costumes and the traditions of the Camargue, but also bullfighting, the city’s distinctly Italian flavor and profoundly Spanish character, and its traveler Romany communities.

It is a culture of strong flavors and full of contradictions – socially, historically, and politically. It gets under your skin and stays with you throughout your life, oscillating between feelings of love and hate, attraction and repulsion. I’ve always felt more Mediterranean than French. It was the prism through which I came to understand everything I learned and encountered from there on. And when I became a fashion designer, it was the most personal thing I had to offer: my inner core, or at least a part of it.

What can you only do in Arles?

Become a child again through the power of the imagination – and watch the Rhône through the windows of the Musée Réattu as it arrives from the north.

What makes Arles unique?

Arles has a spirit all its own: a sense of humor, its own expressions, an approach to life that sits somewhere between laughter and tears, a love of the extraordinary, and a taste for eccentricity that, at least for me, have now disappeared.

What do these two exhibitions at the Musée Réattu represent for you?

A look back. A full stop. They are also a tribute to this museum, which alongside Museon Arlaten, Provence’s ethnographic museum, first awakened in me as a young child, my understanding of what art could be. I still draw for the stage, but I’m slowing down a little now. It feels like the right time to put things in order. Olivier Saillard, director of the Palais Galliera in Paris, and I have just established an association dedicated to preserving my personal archives.

My fashion work – my drawings and thousands of designs – belongs to the Spanish group STL. My costume-design archives are housed at the Centre national du costume et de la scène in Moulins in central France. My more personal archives, including the drawings on show here, will stay in Arles. They are not precious objects, but they trace a path from nursery school to the present day, charting my lifelong fascination with the history of dress – everything it has inspired over the course of seven decades, and the images that have accompanied me throughout my life and career.

What role does photography play in your artistic practice?

I’ve always been what you might call a compulsive devourer of books – an iconophile, with a huge appetite for images. As a child, and even into the new millennium, I experienced much of the world by proxy, through images: photographs, newspapers, magazines. I collected them, compiled them, pasted them into albums, creating a kind of kaleidoscope from which my own images could emerge through a curious alchemy of memory, vision, and all the senses.

And drawing?

I don’t collect drawings, apart from the occasional anonymous piece that captures my imagination. I’ve never cared much for signatures – in fact, quite the opposite: I’m fascinated by anonymity. The exhibition brings together only my most modest drawings, right down to the doodles I’ve made while talking on the telephone. As far back as I can remember, I’ve never thought of myself as an artist, but rather as someone who decorates.

Where are your favorite places for a drink or dinner?

Most of the places I loved have disappeared, but the garden at the Hôtel Jules César (9 Boulevard des Lices) is still a wonderful place to sit and chat, and Le Galoubet (18 Rue du Docteur Fanton) remains a must. I also like to leave the city behind and head into the Alpilles or the Camargue.

What advice would you give someone visiting Arles for the first time?

Get a little lost in the old streets of the Hauture district, above the Roman amphitheater, where there are hardly any shops or cars. Or wander through La Roquette, on the eastern side of the city, from the Trinquetaille bridge to the new bridge – a neighborhood once home to boatmen and shipowners, then later to the city’s Romany community. It is heavily gentrified today, but is not without charm. One of Arles’s great virtues is that it can be discovered by foot.