until Sunday March 20 2016

Palais Galliera
T : +33 (0)1 56 52 86 00
10 avenue Pierre Ier de Serbie
75116 Paris
France

Les robes trésors de la comtesse Greffulhe

This exhibition focusing on the wardrobe of Élizabeth, Countess Greffulhe, whose beauty and elegance was one of the main inspirations for Marcel Proust and the fashion designers of her time.

For the first time ever, the Palais Galliera is displaying the fabulous wardrobe of Countess Greffulhe, née Élisabeth de Caraman-Chimay (1860-1952). She was the cousin of French dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou and was immortalised for posterity by Marcel Proust as the Duchess of Guermantes in the famous novel In Search of Lost Time. Proust wrote to Montesquiou : ‘There is no single part of her to be found in any other woman, or anywhere else for that matter. The entire mystery of her beauty is in the glow, above all in the enigma of her eyes. I have never seen a woman as beautiful as she.’