1925-2025. One hundred years of Art Deco
Orient Express is a legend, its name evokes adventure, refinement and mystery, born of a singular vision where excellence admits no compromise. Under the patronage of Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin, Orient Express proudly partners the centennial of Paris’s 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts.
A century on, from October 22nd 2025 to April 26th 2026, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs pays homage to that founding moment. In its grand nave, an original Étoile du Nord carriage shares the spotlight with three visionary scale models of the reborn Orient Express, each realized under the vision of architect and Artistic Director of Orient Express Maxime d’Angeac. This scénography draws a direct line from 1925’s daring modernism to today’s redefinition of luxury travel.
The Spirit of 1925
Paris’s 1925 exposition heralded an aesthetic revolution, uniting technical virtuosity, industrial progress and untamed creativity. The Orient Express embodied that spirit, an ever-moving laboratory of innovation where the perfection of craft and the science of detail delivered a total aesthetic experience. As an ambassador of French art de vivre, it collaborated with visionary designers such as René Prou.
In the Footsteps of the “Grand Ensembliers”
The “grand ensembliers” of 1925 such as Ruhlmann, Dunand, Prou, Chareau, presented complete decorative schemes, harmonizing furniture, textiles, lighting, tableware and interiors into a seamless sensory world. The Normandie ocean liner and the Orient Express translated that holistic vision into travel, their very names conjuring elegance.
The Art of Reawakening Excellence
Charged with reviving the Orient Express, Maxime d’Angeac extends that legacy. Radical in precision, total in conception, he orchestrates France’s finest artisans: embroiderers, sculptors, horologists, coppersmiths, glaziers, cabinet-makers, engineers… Each EPV-accredited, each contributing bespoke elements that honour both tradition and tomorrow: energy sobriety, sustainability and safety without surrendering elegance, comfort or sensation.
Contemporary Virtuosity
The exhibition opens spectacularly with Orient Express itself, the jewel of luxury and innovation. Alongside a meticulously restored Étoile du Nord carriage, Maxime d’Angeac’s three new models fill the nave, inviting visitors into a world where art, beauty and dreams are conjured anew, as they were in 1925
The Aesthetic of Restraint
Here, luxury whispers through materials and the precision of detail. Space is sculpted for eye and body alike: hidden furniture, recessed mouldings, integrated dressings, all in pursuit of balance between beauty, function, comfort and innovation. The show prompts reflection on the evolution of luxury: an intimate immersion in coherence, harmony and precision, far from excess or ostentation.
Comfort, Excellence, Innovation : A New Vision of Travel
This exhibition is also a manifesto for today’s journey: a return to the mastery of time, the inhabitation of space, the reverberation of silence. In rejecting the instant, it celebrates slowness, deliberation and contemplation: the very philosophy of 1925’s “useful elegance” and “grace of the moment.” This train is a tribute to handcraft, to vision, to all that demands time.
Orient Express remains a destination unto itself, another world apart. The legend lives on.
