Proust's Muse, The Countess Greffulhe

The Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology, New York

An exhibition from the collections of the Palais Galliera, presented at The Museum at FIT in New York from 23 September to 7 January 2017.

This exhibition is an adaption of La Mode retrouvée, les robes trésors de la comtesse Greffulhe, presented in Paris from 7 November 2015 to 20 March 2016.

Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe presents forty extraordinary pieces, outfits and accessories from the famous wardrobe of Elisabeth de Caraman-Chimay, Countess Greffulhe (1860–1952). A famous beauty, recognized in her day for her “aristocratic and artistic elegance”, the Countess fascinated her contemporaries, beginning with Marcel Proust who said to her cousin Robert de Montesquiou: “I have never seen a woman so beautiful.” When Proust wrote his celebrated novel In Search of Lost Time, Countess Greffulhe was one of his first inspirations for the character of Oriane, Duchess de Guermantes, of whom he wrote: “Each of her dresses seemed like the projection of a particular aspect of her soul.”