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The Magician of the GallieraPARIS — Standing on the rooftop of the Musée Galliera, the tip of the Eiffel tower just in view, Olivier Saillard is literally and figuratively on top of his world.As director of the Italianate museum that the Duchess of Galliera built in the 19th century, Mr. Saillard is surveying the final makeover before the museum re-opens its doors in September with the first exhibition dedicated to Azzedine Alaïa.But both in his head and in the various projects of this elegant and artistic curator, there is a sense that he has already put his mark on fashion.“I feel that Madame Grès was the beginning. It made such an impact,” he said, referring to an exhibition held at the Musée Bourdelle in 2011, a museum of sculpture here where the legendary couturier’s pleated Grecian dresses seemed to grow from the existing landscape.Then there was the extraordinary fashion show at Les Docks, a modernist space at the ugly end of the Seine. The scene was transformed by a magical installation of an all-white collection by Comme des Garçons, shown on mannequins inside transparent plastic bubbles.That inspired a display of Balenciaga from the Galliera archives, with piquant inserts of the futurist work of the designer Nicolas Ghesquière.“Olivier proposed it,” said Adrian Joffe of Comme des Garçons. “He loved the collection so much and had the idea to do it with Balenciaga. And although we did not love the building, Rei thought it was interesting,” he continued, referring to his partner, Rei Kawakubo, who has refused all exhibitions and believes that the only one should be after her death. Mr. Saillard was the exception.“Olivier did one exhibition for us about the absence of clothes — very conceptual, very moving, a poem on coat hangers,” Mr. Joffe said of a Saillard event in Dover Street Market, a Comme des Garçons London space.The curator’s most dramatic collaboration has been his recent work with Tilda Swinton on “The Impossible Wardrobe.” They donned white cotton gloves to display pieces of historical clothing worn by Marie Antoinette, Napoleon Bonaparte and Elsa Schiaparelli and brought history vividly to life.These collaborators do not speak each other’s language, though Ms. Swinton said: “Since we are both passionately fascinated by the unspoken and the unspeakable, it is a profoundly happy partnership. We string meanings up in front of each other like garlands, like paper chains, whipping ideas into the air.”The actress was in Paris last week to work on a new project called “The Eternity Dress”: the evolution of a garment from cloth to body in one single piece of performance art.She says of Mr. Saillard, her friend and colleague: “Olivier works between the cracks, perhaps inhabiting most closely the rhythm of a choreographer, yet channeling the power of an activist.”Mr. Saillard — dressed on the roof top one day in a stylish mix of Dries Van Noten and Hermes, set off by a modernist Kenzo tie — looks artistic, mildly bookish, like the learned son of a Paris intellectual.He was born into a large family in Pontarlier, a small town in the chilly east of France, near the Swiss border.“They call it ‘little Siberia,”’ he said. He told of days when his taxi driver parents were both working, when he and Lucette, one of his four sisters, would climb up to the attic to play with the family’s cast-off clothes. He recalled sitting back in a soft huddle of cloth breathing a sigh of joy.It would be easy to imagine that his frugal childhood had formed the curator’s make-do attitude. In a conversation about the corporate brands that have muscled their way with big money into museum shows, he said that the Madame Grès exhibition had cost him only €150,000, about $195,000.Although he is the curator of a sparkling exhibition, “Paris Haute Couture,” at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris until July 6, he is not so taken with the glittering “Gatsby” dresses that have already drawn more than 500,000 visitors.“Maybe because of the current crisis, people are fascinated with the glitz, whether it is real or fake,” said Mr. Saillard, who researched the history of the Austrian crystal makers Swarovski back to 1895. The starry surfaces, discreet or dramatic, from Carven and Dior to Lanvin and Yves Saint Laurent, are interspersed by work from a few current designers.However inspiring Mr. Saillard’s visual experiments, he is also a man of words: a lot of them, printed on cards like short poems and recited with his collaborator Violetta Sanchez, a former model and muse. The language raises wry smiles and ripples of laughter.Mr. Saillard managed to get his message out during a recent show, when, after taking a jacket and artfully turning it into a variety of other pieces of clothing, he took the scissors to his suit and cut it into pieces.Christian Lacroix, whose friendship with Mr. Saillard has built over a decade, said that describing him as a “writer” or “poet” makes more sense than the denuded definition an “artist.”“Poet sounds a bit old fashioned, forgotten, too romantic and sweet,” Mr. Lacroix said. “But there is no other word in French for someone who really knows words and uses them with vigor, inspiration and creativity — like a painter. And there is no French word either for ‘performer’ although that fits Olivier well too: part actor, choreographer and scenographer. Then there is the word ‘curator’ — but he is not academic and is as interested in the recent past as much as history. He really has invented a métier of his own.”The two men worked together on a semi-historical exhibition when Mr. Saillard was at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs and produced shows that included Jean Paul Gaultier’s stage costumes and the work of Sonia Rykiel and Yohji Yamamoto.Before that, after studying both archaeology and contemporary art, he worked for five years at the fashion museum in Marseilles.He referred to his early training ground as the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, where he was sent as a conscientious objector in lieu of military service. But his fascination with museums goes back to the days when his brother would take him to Paris and go off to work, dumping the 12-year-old Olivier in museums with a sandwich and a bottle of water.“But it was at the Art Deco where I learned to copy all the styles of the designers,” Mr. Saillard said, picking up a pencil to recreate the drawing style of Saint Laurent and the pin-thin legs of Lacroix illustrations.There are people in the museum world who, in private, sniff at Mr. Saillard for being too involved with current fashion. But he is the first to say he believes that museum shows by the big houses are out of control.He has also been criticized for turning down the chance to have the Gaultier exhibition that started in Montreal and has since been seen around the world.“I would like to do a Gaultier exhibition in a couple of years, when he is ready, but it would be rather strange to pay for a show to come here to France, and Musée Galliera is certainly not big enough for it,” Mr. Saillard said.What comes next at his museum?A display of 1950s photographs from the Condé Nast archives, then a complete collection of an early aristocratic wardrobe that brings out one of Mr. Saillard’s favorite expressions: “à tomber par terre” — knock you down. His curatorial enthusiasm runs to the smallest piece of cloth or a scrap of historic information.Ms. Swinton described his enthusiasm like this: “Olivier’s knowledge of fashion and the evolution of costume is encyclopaedic and nonpareil, yet he is constantly searching with meticulous glee into the ether for the invisible threads between the explicit and the knowable.”