Evolutions Studio

Now a new exhibition opens the wardrobe door on the 20th century's first great fashion trendsetter, Elisabeth, Countess Greffulhe, the woman Proust immortalised as the beautiful Duchess of Guermantes in his literary masterpiece “A la recherche du temps perdu” (“Remembrance of Things Past”). “All the mystery of her beauty was in her brightness, in her enigma and most of all in her eyes,” Proust wrote in 1893 to the poet and dandy Robert de Montesquiou, who despite being her uncle was just as smitten. The countess also knew how to make a grand entrance — and also how to leave her public wanting more, never staying very long at any of the balls and grand soirees of belle epoque Paris, where she of course arrived fashionably late.

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France marvels at class of woman who made Proust swoon