L'histoire de Hubert de Givenchy

In 1944 Hubert de Givenchy went to work for Jacques Fath.  In the mornings he worked with Fath and in the afternoons he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  Eventually Givenchy left Fath to work with Robert Piguet and then at Lucien Lelong (where both Dior and Balmain launched their careers) before working with the great Elsa Sciaparelli.   In 1952 Givenchy opened his own house under his own name.

His PR was handled by the former model for Jacques Fath, Bettina Graziani.  

Bettina Graziani in a 1957 Givenchy hat. Photo by Frank Horvat.

Givenchy named one of his earliest and most popular designs after her, The Bettina Blouse.  Crisp white cotton and with Bishop sleeves ruffled in black and white broderie anglaise.

Photo from Life magazine

In 1955 Givenchy met his idol, Cristobal Balenciaga.  Givenchy said that Balenciaga taught him "it isn't necessary to add a button where it does not belong, or to add a flower to make a dress beautiful.  It is beautiful of itself."

I really adore this admiration Givenchy had and devotion to singular designers like Balenciaga.  Mr. Givenchy has been responsible in large part for the opening of the Balenciaga museum in Guetaria Spain - personally donating over 100 pieces to the museum.  I also noticed that the beautiful and heartbreaking last dress that Madame Gres designed and gave to Givenchy shortly after she retired in the incredible exhibit, Madame Gres, at the Musée Galliera this past summer.

Mr Givenchy said of the dress that an old and fragile woman was waiting to see him in his atelier.  It was Madame Gres.  She gave him the last dress she designed as a thank you for supporting her work.  Stunning.  Beautiful.  Sad.

Photo by Andrea Cairone for RARE vintage.

Givenchy designs became increasingly simple and striking and were often worn by his muse Audrey Hepburn.  He dressed her for Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany's, How to Steal a Million and live Happily Ever After and Charade.

I am so thrilled whenever I come across a beautiful piece by Givenchy (a personal favorite of mine) and this Givenchy couture sample with its beautifully embroidered bodice is so elegant.  I thought it was the perfect piece to end our week of 'pretty' on.  Striking.  Simple.  Glorious and glamorous.  Late 1960s Givenchy Couture.

1960s Givenchy Couture Gown.  Size 2/4

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Baby, It's #%@$ Cold Outside!

It's not just cold here in New York, it's #%@! cold here in New York!  Like it is too cold to shop the sales, to cold to go see a client with a collection of Madame Gres dresses from the 1950s and 1960s - ha!  it could never be that cold!!  Got Gres at the North Pole?  I'm there!  Next flight!

But because we can't just stay home and snuggle with someone we love: husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, dogs, cats - I don't know are cats snuggly?  We have to go and face the cold and we want to do it looking fabulous!  So today we have our RARE vintage boyfriend to cuddle up to: Jean Paul Gaultier.  A Jean Paul Gaultier circa early 1990s sweater with a rolled and padded collar and cuffs and scattered sequin embroidery throughout.   Cozy Chic!

1990s Jean Paul Gaultier sequin embroidered sweater.  Size 4-6
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Capes are for L♡VERS

Capes are for lovers because cape lovers love a good snuggle.  That is a lot of love in that last sentence!  Capes are cozy and they are also cool.  Check out a few fabulous street style photos before seeing our two incredible capes:

Our first cape is very Phoebe Philo for Celine but in fact is a Madame Gres cape.  Madame Gres adored volume but it is a volume that is light and when worn there is the surprise of the gorgeous chevron interior.

Madame Gres chevron print cape in a dark raspberry

Our second cape is a delightful Pauline Trigere with a wonderful peek of houndstooth check.  I love that both of these capes have a somewhat simple exterior and then a whimsical interior.  It's like icing on the cape!

Pauline Trigere houndstooth print cape.

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"Is it?? It Was." Weekend Reading 15: Rosamond Bernier

Updated:  Mrs. Bernier has just told me that she wore the 1970s Halston when she lectured at the Grand Palais and wore it numerous times afterwards when she lectured at the Met.  You see, you can have your fashion and wear it more then once!

What to wear when you are 91 and giving a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: a flowing tie-dyed Halston - if you are the ever so fabulous and ever so glamorous, Rosamond Bernier that is.  

Weekend reading for you from RARE vintage about the exceptional and fascinating life of Rosamond Bernier. Read on...


Mrs. Bernier lectured for over thirty years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other places  about her friendships with artists like Picasso, Matisse and Miro.  She gave her final lecture in March of 2008 and this last time she spoke about her life in couture.

"If I hadn't given some of my Balenciaga evening gowns to the Costume Institute, I would wear them right now."   And Mrs. Bernier mean what she says.  On her website, rosamondbernier.com, there is a photograph of her wearing a Zandra Rhodes in 1972 and she writes that she still wears it now.

Rosamond Bernier in Zandra Rhodes lecturing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972.  

Photograph  from rosamondbernier.com

"I had the excitement of ordering my first couture dress from that first Balenciaga collection in February 1946.  I was to wear it for special occasion for years.   Not long ago I wore it for dinner at the house of a master American couture, Oscar de la Renta.  My host gasped when I entered.  "Is it??" he asked with excitement.  It was."

1946 Balenciaga evening gown in the collection of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

Gift of Rosamond Bernier.

L'Oeil of Rosamond Bernier

In 1955 Rosamond Bernier and her then husband, Georges Bernier, founded the magazine L'Oeil.  An early coup for the magazine was a tip that there was an undiscovered collection of Picasso paintings in Barcelona.

'Telephoning for an appointment at the Barcelona apartment, editor Bernier got a surprising answer:"  Come at 11 tonight."  Once inside, she found herself plunged into the world of a gypsy encampment.  "The lights burn out all the time here," Picasso's niece Lolita explained.  In the semidarkness, Rosamond Bernier saw a room cluttered with ancient furniture, presided over by Picasso's smiling sister, Dona Lola, wrapped in a sheet held together with safety pins.  "Mama suffers from rheumatism and can't sleep.  None of us ever goes to bed before 6." the family explained and then plunged into the evening's entertainment.  Dona Lola's nephew began plucking out a lively flamenco on his guitar.  Lolita sat down at the piano.  In no time Juanin began a heel stomping dance; Doctor Jaime handed around glasses of sweet Malaga wine while keeping time with a multicolored duster (a present from Uncle Pablo).  Dona Lola swayed happily to the rhythm, urging the dancers on with shouts of "Ole!".  (All sounds very Grey Gardens-ish doesn't it?!  Only this was in Barcelona in 1955!)

A first edition of The Selective Eye (an anthology of the first nine issues of L'Oeil) from the library of Truman Capote.  Available at Bauman Rare Books.

The fashionable eye of Rosamond Bernier.  Pieces from her collection that are now a part of the Costume Institute's collection:

1949 Christian Dior gown (which also was the featured piece on the cover for the catalog of the Dior show at the Met.)

1972 Zandra Rhodes

1966 Yves Saint Laurent ensemble.

1968 Madame Gres silk gown.

1962 Balenciaga silk cocktail dress.  

Now does the dress above look familiar to anyone?

A similar 1962 Balencaiga from RARE vintage:)

In October Some of my Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir by Rosamond Bernier will be published.  You can pre-order it as I did on Amazon.com.  And FYI Mrs. Bernier will be signing books at the Met on Wednesday, November 2nd at 4PM.  See you there!

Some text excerpted from Time magazine and a NY Times video from Rosamond Bernier's final lecture at the Met which can be seen in full here.

Thoroughly Modern Giambattista

Couture is dead.  Couture isn't relevant.  Yawn.  Every couture season, we hear the same old same old about the haute couture collections.  It does not seem to be about what the designers are doing but why they are doing it.  They are doing it because they can.  And sometimes they do it magnificently.

Giambattista Valli was unanimously voted into the exclusive Chambre Syndicale de la Mode and showed his first haute couture collection on Monday.  We had already had a sneak peek of what the collection might look like over the weekend when Charlotte Casiraghi wore a "Princess Grace blue" chiffon gown with a long cape over her shoulders and a jeweled belt at the waist.   

Photo: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images

But it still did not prepare me for just how beautiful, modern and relevant Valli's first full fledged couture show would be.  It was not a performance with costume-y make up and unnecessary theatrics.  It was a show of totally gorgeous, wearable pieces.  I was enchanted from the first look which was inspired by the blouse de cabine, the white smock worn by the atelier workers (and worn by Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy).  Valli pulled it down into a monogrammed skirt with a black bow, a simple black sweater and Giambattista Valli's trademark pearls.

There was a lot of minimalist black and white but with fluffy and yet still restrained details.

Then a burst of red and one of those pretty, feminine frothy dresses that Valli excels at.  

And then there was some grrrr in the couture.

There is that long cape again.  Makes me regret not buying the long black chiffon cape that was on sale at Celine :(

And the jewelry was great as well and made me wonder if he had been inspired by the Madame Gres show at the Musée Bourdelle.  

This is what couture should look like.  I look forward to seeing more from Giambattista Valli.  Perhaps at Christian Dior?  Just a thought...

Daisy Fellowes in Christian Dior at the Beistegui Ball which reminded me a little bit of Giambattista Valli's leopard print gown.

Fun fact: Giambattista Valli worked for Roberto Capucci

Paris: A RARE vintage Travel Diary. Day Three. Madame Gres: Elle Sont la Purete Incarnée

The Musée Galliera, the museum of costume and textile in Paris, is fortunately closed for renovation.  I say fortunately because yesterday, I went to see the Madame Gres exhibit at the Musée Bourdelle and the setting was an ideal and unexpected place to exhibit the extraordinary work of Madame Gres.  

"La perfection est l'un des buts que je recherche." 

Madame Gres

It is a meandering museum as is the show.  At first, I thought the exhibit was only a small number of dresses but you keep walking and you discover in the artist's  studio, two beautiful gowns, then hidden behind a partition is another group of extraordinary dresses, then all of the sudden there is a room filled with original sketches from the Maison Gres archives which Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent bought and donated to the museum.  So it is really very thrilling to turn a corner, walk through a garden, enter a room and each time, you think to yourself: this is the most beautiful dress I have ever seen.  But then you walk along, come upon another dress and you think: no, this is the most beautiful dress I have ever seen.  But then you think: well, that other dress was so beautiful...

The museum is dedicated to the sculptor (we all know that Madame Gres considered herself a sculptor) Antoine Bourdelle.  I think exhibiting the dresses amongst Bourdelles' massive and monumental sculptures which were classical but not literally from ancient Rome or Greece added to the sense of timelessness to the clothing.  I saw one dress that was very similar to a Madame Gres dress we had at RARE vintage and a sketch that looked very similar to another dress we had - it is an extraordinary honor for me to have and have had some superb examples of Madame Gres' work at RARE vintage.  Here are some photos from the show.   Enjoy!!  I know I did!

and a detail of the dress that will break your heart: the last dress Madame Gres ever did.  There was an old and fragile woman waiting to see Hubert de Givenchy in his atelier.  It was Madame Gres.  She gave him the last dress she did as a thank you for supporting her work.

all photographs by my most wonderful and ever so patient husband, Andrea Cairone

Madame Gres: Couture at Work.  Musée Bourdelle. Through 24 July.

I am always interested in purchasing Madame Gres dresses and accessories for RARE vintage from those who can bear to part with her pieces.