Olivier Saillard shows the 1897, Worth “tea-gown” dress to heirs of the comtesse Greffulhe

« This is the first ever exhibition of fashion recorded in litterature », says with great pride, Olivier Saillard, director of Musée Galliera in Paris. The collection of dresses worn by Comtesse Greffulhe, born Princesse de Caraman Chimay, is the largest of the museum of fashion of the City of Paris, and Marcel Proust and Robert de Montesquiou mentioned them many times in their writings. The daily newspaper le Figaro also recorded most of Elisabeth’s social apparitions as she was one of the most influential ladies of the turn of the century.

The Byzantine dress worn by Elisabeth Greffulhe at her daughter’s wedding at the Madeleine in 1904. She totally eclipsed the bride

Satin lamé with beige silk and tulle embroidered with glass and metal beads, and zibeline lining

Born in 1860, she married very young, the wealthy bank heir and unfaithful Henry Greffulhe. She then had no other choice but to keep the most famous “salon” in Paris at her rue d’Astorg house. The exhibition shows, in a minimalist decor, close to 70 of her dresses and coats. She liked mostly Worth and Fortuny, but wore until her sixties, very bare arm dresses by Lanvin or Jenny. Her waist was the tiniest and her allure was her pride. Two short films show her moving around on the terrace of her Parisian house.

Robert de Montesquiou, her cousin and a dandy, was of great influence on the way she dressed, on the arts she sponsored and the intellectuals or scientists she befriended. And the artist Paul César Helleu drew many pastels and “sanguines” of her, which are shown in the exhibition.

Unsigned evening lamé dresses and coats from 1925

Rodin and Gustave Moreau, Stravinsky and the ballets russes, scientist Branly and most politicians of the time, were regulars of her salon. Nicolas II, the Russian czar, gave her a superb cape when he came to Paris in 1896. She was already famous then.
What makes her so special is the sadness of her personal life and the cult she devoted to her own beauty, as recorded by photographer Nadar.

One of her first dresses in pink silk satin with chestnut velvet by Maison Soinard, 1887

Her only daughter Elaine,  owned a few fabulous Worth and Fortuny dresses that are not in the show. But we will discover some of them in the Fortuny exhibition that Sophie Grossiord, curator in chief of Galliera is preparing for 2017. (until March 20th and at F.I.T in New York from September to January 2017)
(For more information on Comtesse Greffulhe, read her great-granddaughter’s biography “La Comtesse Greffulhe”, by Anne de Cossé Brissac,  Ed.Perrin, or Laure Hillerin’s published by Fayard).

Elisabeth Greffulhe by Nadar, 1887