The Met Costume Institute to exhibit Jacqueline de Ribes this fall

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Jul 9, 2015

The Costume Institute has announced that its fall 2015 exhibit, "Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style", will be on view at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Anna Wintour Costume Center from November 19, 2015 to February 21, 2016
 

The exhibit, which will feature 60 haute couture and ready-to-wear ensembles from de Ribes’ personal archive dating from 1959 to the present, will feature the works of several designers including Giorgio Armani, Pierre Balmain, Marc Bohan for the House of Dior, Roberto Cavalli, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Norma Kamali, Guy Laroche, Ralph Lauren, Ralph Rucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro and her own personal works.
 
"A close study of de Ribes’s life of creative expression yields illuminating insights into her strategies of style,” said Harold Koda, the curator in charge of The Costume Institute. "Her approach to dress as a statement of individuality can be seen as a kind of performance art. When she established her own fashion house, her friend Yves Saint Laurent gave his blessing to the venture as a welcome projection of her elegance."

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Born in Paris in 1929 to aristocratic parents, de Ribes has been a muse to many haute couture designers who, like many, perceived her as the personification of Parisian elegance. Most of her wardrobe was comprised of her own designs made either herself or with a dressmaker. She created a successful design business and directed it from 1982 to 1995.
 
The exhibit will also feature ephemera and photographs of de Ribes who was photographed by the likes of Slim Aarons, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Cecil Beaton, Robert Doisneau, Horst, Jean Baptiste Mondino, Irving Penn, Francesco Scavullo, Victor Skrebneski, and Juergen Teller.