Ghislaine de Polignac's wardrobe & miscellaneous

Vintage Fashion Sale

Sale room 2 hotel Drout

Tuesday November 18 at 2:00 pm

Exhibitions

Saturday November 15 at 11am/18pm

Monday November 17 at 11am/18pm

Tuesday, November 18 at 11am/12pm

30% INCL. VAT

Drouot live +1.6% incl. VAT

Expert in 20th-century couture and ready-to-wear Pierre Zannier

Sale manager Chloé Berthenet

For further information: contact@lhuillierparis.com 01 47 70 36 16

COLLECTION OF ITEMS

Items can be collected by APPOINTMENT at 16 Rue la Bruyère, 75009 Paris from the afternoon of the day after the sale, on presentation of a paid slip. Monday to Saturday, 11am to 6.30pm. Lots may be collected free of charge for 2 weeks. Then 10 euros per item per week.

Please bring a bag.

Possibility of sending all lots by Colissimo on quotation by the studio and DHL outside France.

The last fashion treasures of Princess Ghislaine de Polignac

A historic dressing room at auction

The L'Huillier auction house is privileged to present for sale an exceptional wardrobe: that of Princess Ghislaine de Polignac. Carefully preserved by her children since her death in 2011, this personal collection features dozens of couture and haute-couture pieces, including a remarkable Athènes evening gown by Pierre Balmain, from the spring-summer 1972 collection - a rare piece, perfectly documented.

A leading figure in European aristocracy and a fixture of Parisian café society, Ghislaine de Polignac embodied a certain art de vivre and French elegance for several decades. She took part in the most emblematic masked balls of her era - notably the famous bal des têtes de 1957 organized by her friend Baron de Redé - and even lived for a time in a wing of the Hôtel Lambert.

But Princess Ghislaine de Polignac was not only distinguished by her elegance: she also played a decisive role in the evolution of fashion in France. As Didier Grumbach* points out in Histoires de la mode, in 1952 she became the first French designer in the contemporary sense of the term.

Spotted by Max Heilbronn, then director of Galeries Lafayette and eager to modernize the department store's image, she was appointed to a position then unheard of in France: that of "fashion director", based on the American model. Her mission: to rethink the fashion offering in order to appeal to a demanding clientele, accustomed to couture houses and the luxury of fitting rooms, while democratizing access to style.

With a perfect mastery of the codes of elegance and a keen intuition of the expectations of her time, Ghislaine de Polignac inaugurated a new approach: refined, contemporary and accessible fashion, designed for the modern woman but faithful to a certain idea of French good taste.

One day, crossing paths with her friend the Duchess of Windsor, the latter was astonished by the freshness of her outfit: " Do not tell me it comes from Galeries Lafayette. ..". - before ordering two of them.

This dressing room is more than just a collection of designer pieces. Behind each label lies a story, a vision, an influence. It's the elegance of an era, worn by a free, curious and visionary woman.

*Didier Grumbach, Histoires de la mode, Paris - Éditions du Regard, 2008