Jenny Evening Dress

L: © Stéphane Piera / Galliera / Roger-Viollet R: Photo by Eileen Costa. © 2016 The Museum at FIT

L: © Stéphane Piera / Galliera / Roger-Viollet
R: Photograph © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

© Zach Hilty/BFA.com

Photograph © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

This grand evening gown in ivory silk was designed by Jenny Sacerdote, a couturière whose clothes were described in the fashion press as being characterized by “this new spirit which we call modern.”

Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.


Jenny
Evening gown, circa 1924-25
Silk satin, silk muslin, embroidery
GAL1964.20.19, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera

palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

Vitaldi Babani Evening Coats

Photographs © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

Photographs © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

Left: The Countess Greffulhe was a pioneering fundraiser for the arts and a great supporter of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Leon Bakst’s brilliantly colored dance costumes and sets inspired both fashion and interior design. The Countess’s flowing robes and coats by Babani and Fortuny created a similarly exotic effect.

Vitaldi Babani
Coat, circa 1920
Printed and embroidered silk chiffon
GAL1964.20.18, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera

Right: After her daughter grew up, the Countess Greffulhe stopped wearing pink, which was associated with youth. However, she continued to wear green. The Japonism for which Babani was famous is exemplified by this green velvet evening coat with a kimono-like silhouette.

Vitaldi Babani
Evening coat, circa 1920
Silver lamé, black silk, emerald green velvet, black taffeta
GAL1964.20.16, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera

Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.

palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

On Marcel Proust

One of Marcel Proust’s biggest fan’s on social media is Marcelita Swann. If you’d like to learn more about the author, her twitter account is a great place to start!











Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.

Pierre Bulloz Evening Dress

Photograph © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

Photograph © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

This beautiful black evening dress, embroidered with black and violet sequins, shows how the Countess Greffulhe retained her dramatic signature style, while also adapting to evolving fashions in the twentieth century.
Pierre Bulloz
Evening dress, circa 1913
Silk satin, chiffon, and tulle, embroidered with sequins, tassels with glass faceted pearls
GAL1980.189.12, gift of the duc de Gramont to the Palais Galliera

Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.
palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

Vitaldi Babani

Photograph © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

Photograph © Zach Hilty/BFA.com

Far left: Attributed to Babani, this evening coat is strongly influenced by Fortuny. In particular, the floral and vegetal motifs of the fabric recall Fortuny’s love of Renaissance textiles, which were themselves heavily influenced by imported Asian textiles. Made of green velvet, lined in red taffeta, and fastened with a Murano glass button, it is one of many Orientalist garments worn by the Countess Greffulhe during the 1910s and 1920s. Notice again her love of green.
Attributed to Vitaldi Babani
Evening coat, circa 1912
Green silk velvet printed with gold, glass buttons
GAL1964.20.13, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera
Near Left: In the years prior to World War I, the Countess Greffulhe began to support the Ballets Russes, and her personal style also increasingly gravitated toward Orientalist garments. The house of Vitaldi Babani specialized in the sale of Japanese kimonos and garments by Fortuny and Liberty, before starting to create their own designs, such as this gown in the form of a caftan, which was originally worn, slightly bloused, over a sash.
Vitaldi Babani
Indoor gown, circa 1912
Grey silk taffeta with painted pochoir decoration, silk passementerie, glass buttons, lined in orange silk taffeta
GAL1964.20.12, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera

Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.
palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

Mariano Fortuny

© Julien Vidal / Galliera / Roger-Viollet

© Julien Vidal / Galliera / Roger-Viollet

Mariano Fortuny, a Spanish artist based in Venice, created “unique” garments made from marvelous fabrics that evoked for Proust “that Venice loaded with the gorgeous East.” In Proust’s novel, the Duchesse de Guermantes often wears Fortuny, and the narrator asks her about one such gown “streaked with gold like a butterfly’s wing” that seemed to have a special poetry. Soon he is bribing his mistress Albertine to stay with him, by buying her Fortuny gowns that “swarmed with Arabic ornaments, like the Venetian palaces hidden like sultanas behind a screen of pierced stone.”
Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.


Mariano Fortuny
Jacket, circa 1912
Bronze green silk velvet printed with gold, matching belt
GAL1964.20.14AB, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera

palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

Worth “Byzantine dress”

© L. Degrâces et Ph. Joffre / Galliera / Roger-Viollet

© L. Degrâces et Ph. Joffre / Galliera / Roger-Viollet

At the wedding of her daughter Élaine, the Countess Greffulhe wore this sensational “Byzantine empress” gown, ensuring that press attention focused on the mother of the bride. Indeed, the bride’s dress was hardly mentioned at all. According to La Vie Parisienne, “As luck would have it, Madame Greffulhe reached the top of the steps a long time before her daughter and was able to remain there for about a quarter of an hour, in full view of everyone.” The dress bears a Worth label, but in his memoirs, Paul Poiret claimed to have designed it.
Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.
Worth
“Byzantine dress,” 1904
Lamé taffeta, silk and gold thread, silk tulle, embroidered with glass pearls and metal sequins, fur (originally sable, replaced during restoration in the 1980s with rabbit).
GAL1978.20.2, gift of the duc de Gramont to the Palais Galliera
palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

Maison A. Félix House Coat

© Galliera / Roger-Viollet

© Galliera / Roger-Viollet

Robert de Montesquiou appreciated Élisabeth Greffulhe’s taste and often commented on her fashions, such as a garment of “green shot silk, mixed with violet, which gave her the appearance of a Lorelei” (i.e., a siren or mermaid). This green shot silk housecoat is by the couturier, A. Félix.
Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.
Maison A. Félix
House coat, circa 1895
Shot silk taffeta, silk braid trimming with metallic thread
GAL1964.20.5, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera
palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

Beauchez Evening Gown

© Julien Vidal / Galliera / Roger-Viollet

L: © Julien Vidal / Galliera / Roger-Viollet
R: Photo by Eileen Costa. © 2016 The Museum at FIT

Robert de Montesquiou recalled that the Countess Greffulhe “would have the most renowned designers show her everything that was fashionable; then, when she was certain that they had come to the end of their pretentious rambling and bragging, she [would say], ‘Make me anything you like, as long as it’s not that!’”

Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.


Beauchez
Transformable evening gown with two bodices, circa 1900
Midnight blue and brown silk velvet, machine lace, silk chiffon and tulle, embroidered with beads and sequins
GAL1964.20.8, gift of the Gramont family to the Palais Galliera

palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.

Photographs of the Countess Greffulhe

La comtesse Greffulhe, nÈe Elisabeth de Caraman-Chimay (1860-1952), portant la robe aux lis crÈÈe pour elle par la maison Worth
In this photograph by Paul Nadar, the Countess Greffulhe wears her famous Lily Dress, attributed to the House of Worth, 1896. She studied photography with Nadar and collaborated with him on at least two versions of this photograph, posing in front of a full-length mirror. Long a symbol of female vanity, the mirror can also be compared to a photograph. As Robert de Montesquiou once said, “A photograph is a mirror that remembers.”

Photograph by Paul Nadar.
Palais Galleria, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris.
© Eric Emo/Galliera/Roger-Viollet.
La Comtesse Greffuhle dans une robe de bal
The Countess Élisabeth Greffulhe in a ballgown, circa 1887.

Exposed to the crowd at the opera, the Countess Greffulhe experienced a feeling of triumph. As she once wrote to Robert de Montesquiou, “I don’t think that there is any pleasure in the world comparable to that of a woman who feels that she is being looked at by everybody. . . . How can one live when one can no longer provoke this great anonymous caress, after having known and tasted it?” Photography was another way of presenting herself to the gaze of others.

Photograph by Otto Wegener.
Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris.
© Otto/Galliera/Roger-Viollet.
© Eric Emo/Galliera/Roger-Viollet.
Portrait de la comtesse Elisabeth Greffulhe
The Countess Greffulhe wearing an evening coat, circa 1887.

In this photograph, The Countess Greffulhe poses almost completely concealed by a voluminous evening cape, perhaps the same chinchilla cape that she loaned to Robert de Montesquiou for his portrait by Whistler. She later complained that the cape was never returned by his companion, Yturri.

Photograph by Otto Wegener.
Palais Galleria, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris.
© Otto/Galliera/Roger-Viollet.
palais-galliera-logos-sm

This exhibition was developed by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, Paris Musées.
Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe runs through January 7, 2016 at The Museum at FIT in NYC.