Madam Gres....Ultimate Perfection...

Last Thursday, my colleague Annemiek gave me the pictures she made at the wonderful exhibition in Musee Bourdelle from Madam Gres, we did see during the schooltrip to Paris in May. The exhibition was organized by Fashion Museum Galliera which is currently under construction.I was really looking forward to this exhibition, because you hardly see such an impressive exhibition with so many garments from Madam Gres all together.

To tell you the truth: I had never heard about the sculptor Bourdelle but after the guide who spoke about hislife and work , many of his sculptures can be seen in Paris. The museum itself is really worth a visit with.

Set close to La Tour Montparnasse the building in the courtyard is simply beautiful.

But... we came for the exhhibition of Madam Gres. Ofcourse I knew a little about her dresses: the drapery and the elegance of it. But I didn't know anything about her tragic life. In Wikipedia is written:

Germaine Émilie Krebs (1903–1993), known as Alix Barton and later as "Madame Grès", launched her design house under the name Grès in Paris in 1942. Formally trained as a sculptress, she produced haute couture designs for an array of fashionable women, including the Duchess of Windsor, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Dolores del Río. Her signature was cut-outs on gowns that made exposed skin part of the design, yet still had a classical, sophisticated feel. She was renowned for being the last of the haute couture houses to establish a ready-to-wear line, which she called a "prostitution".[1]
The name Grès was a partial anagram of her husband's first name and alias. He was Serge Czerefkov, a Russian painter, who left her soon after the house's creation.[1] Grès enjoyed years of critical successes but, after Grès herself sold the business in the 1980s, it faltered.
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A tragic life. She was not a good business woman, but usually creative people are not good in business. Her couture house was sold without the rights of her perfume Cabochard launched in 1959 (the perfume is still available).

And at the end, in front of her eyes: everything was thrown into the binm. All her drawings, garments, patterns etc. That was the end of the couture house.

But let's go and see the exhibition. It all starts in the big room with sculptures from Bourdelle and in the middle of this room is a little cabinet with a stunning dress which is made out of 1 piece.

Mindblowing for me. Such a simplicity and elegance. Made out of white silk tricot.

Little perfect placed pleats, moulded into this sculptural dress. A Grecian Goddess.. As with all her dresses: you could wear them today and would look Fabulous in it.

The whole exhibition was a joy to watch and in the perfect setting. There were great gowns as this serie shows.

At the entrance of the former atelier from Bourdelle those dresses were shown.

A room further was this bright green dress showed with beautiful pleated details.

Some of the dresses reminded me of the dresses from Azzedine Alaia. The famous desingners who knew how to show the perfection of the woman's body into tricot. Not very strange to think it, because it seems that Alaia has a big collection of gowns from Madam Gres who admires for her cratmanship. A lot of his Gres collection was in the exhibition.

Madam Gres not only designed and made dresses she also joined forces with jewelery makers as can be seen in those 2 examples.

And on and on it went with the most amazing garments.

Based on a coat from a priest.

The shape of the New Look, but in a different way.

Bright and colourful.

And this one. One of the few dresses made in multicolours.

It was elegance after elegance, style after style and perfection after perfection....
At the end of a room was this display from white dresses with such beautiful details on it.

I guess not all woman can wear those dresses - you must have a perfect figure for it - but it must be very special to see a woman wearing such a dress at the red carpet.

Madam Gres was not good in drawing her deigns, but nevertheless she made little sketches which also have ended in the binn. Someone must have picked them out and a few months ago the skeches were presented to Musee Galliera. as with all musuems there was no money to buy them. Pierre Berge (the former partner from Yves Saint Laurent) stept in and bought all of them and donated them to Musee Galliera. A few examples were in the exhibition.

And there was more...much, much more...

Beautiful draped black dresses....

And those 2 with the colours of the 70's

But as mentioned before it came to a tragic end. This dress is the last one she made and after it was finished she gave it to the fashion designer Hubbert de Givenchy as a gift.

She never made anything more after that dress and died alone in a hospital.

Ofcourse after this Stunning exhibition I bought the catalogue.

Within also fashion photographes were you can see how wonderful the dresses look on woman.

Really worth to see, but you have to be quick......The exhibition ends the 24th of July..
For me it was one of the most beautiful fashion exhibition I have ever seen.

Next blog will be about the fashionshow from our college with great photoos made by my colleague Riky..