The soirée celebrated the Vogue contributor’s first major museum exhibition, a career milestone he has achieved at just 33 years old. Open to the public from today, Rafael Pavarotti: Photographer is curated by Sébastien Quéquet, curator in charge of the museum’s photographic collections, with scenography by longtime collaborator, Ibby Njoya.
The show opens with a handful of personal objects tracing Pavarotti’s unlikely path from Belém, a port city on the edge of the Amazon, to Paris. Among them are a baby mobile his parents, Orland and Rozilene Pavarotti, fashioned for him from rainbow-colored paper clips; the Kodak point-and-shoot he borrowed from his father at 12 to photograph beaches and abandoned buildings in his riverside hometown; and one of his earliest professional photographs, taken in Rio de Janeiro, where he moved at 16 years old and began shooting model books.
From there, the exhibition gives way to the striking editorial images with which Pavarotti quickly made his name, set against walls washed in scarlet, fuchsia, canary yellow, plum, and terracotta. Working frequently with stylist Ib Kamara, Pavarotti casts Black models as goddesses, queens, or warriors. Highlights include the February 2022 British Vogue cover, which brought together a new generation of models including Adut Akech and Anok Yai, and the February 2026 Vogue Italia cover of Awar Odhiang skiing in the Alps. That image revisited a planned 1960s Richard Avedon shoot for Vogue that was to have starred pioneering Black model Donyale Luna, before she was replaced by Veruschka. Also on view are campaigns for Chanel, Dior, Dries Van Noten, Balmain, and H&M, the exhibition’s lead sponsor.
Pavarotti sat midway down one of the two long tables beside his parents, who had taken their first international flight to be there. Shy by nature, he spent much of the evening quietly taking it all in behind dark sunglasses. “Rafael, he’s shy, that’s why he asked me to say some words,” joked co-host Carlos Jereissati, president and chief executive of Brazilian luxury mall operator Iguatemi Group.
“We are particularly happy to support your exhibition, and to celebrate a Brazilian talent who has created such a distinct voice within the world of fashion,” Jereissati continued. “Rafael’s work brings together photography, fashion, identity, and culture in a way that feels both deeply personal and truly universal.”
The room reflected that same cosmopolitan spirit, with conversation flowing easily between Portuguese, French, English, and Italian over a menu rooted in Brazilian flavors, featuring chicken cromesquis, sea bream tartare with passion fruit cream, and a choice of sea bass with moqueca sauce, sweet potato mille-feuille, and pineapple-coconut rice, or chimichurri beef with cassava purée and baby leeks.
Dinner finished with a virtuous finale of deconstructed açaí bowls with wild berries, cocoa sorbet, and crisp tuiles, fortification for the late-night H&M-sponsored after-party featuring Carlita on the decks. On Solum’s red LED-lit dance floor, the usual club visuals came with a more philosophical twist: screens flashed Pavarotti’s poetic missives throughout the night. One read, “The dance floor is a miraculous healing field.”
