Charles Frederick Worth at the Petit Palais
With more than 400 pieces, a first retrospective in Paris celebrates the inventor of Haute Couture.
Inventing Haute Couture is an exhibition title that celebrates the birth of a profession embodied by a Parisian master born in Britain, whose House, located at 7 rue de la Paix, created a style that defined fashions, obsessions, and a dynasty across four generations. The Petit Palais dedicates 1,100 square metres to honouring him and this retrospective brings together more than 400 pieces including gowns, accessories, objets d'art, paintings and graphic works. Alongside treasures from the Palais Galliera collection (previously shown in 2015), rare pieces have been loaned from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Palazzo Pitti, and numerous private collections.
Though navigating between the imposing display cases proves challenging, the beauty is overwhelming, magnified by ballgowns, opera gowns, and exquisite numbers worn by Franca Florio, the American Lady Curzon, and the iconic Countess Greffulhe, Belle Époque cultural lioness to whom Gabriel Fauré dedicated his Pavane.
“Her beauty's entire mystery lies in her radiance, but above, all in her enigmatic eyes. I have never seen so beautiful a woman," Marcel Proust wrote in 1893 to poet and dandy Robert de Montesquiou. Inspired by Worth's famous lily dress, he penned these lines to his muse: "Like a beautiful silver lily with black pistil eyes / Thus you bloom profound and lily-like / and all around you, the devoted troupe / of little flowers bows down.” In Proust's In Search of Lost Time, she becomes the Duchess of Guermantes. The lily dress – donated to the museum by the Gramont family, Countess Greffulhe's heirs in 1978 – ranks among the masterpieces of the Palais Galliera's 19th-century collection. Previously exhibited a decade ago, it now gleams anew after restoration, complete with corset and faux cul, a marvel of the famous, seamless “princess cut” at the waist. Countess Greffulhe commissioned it from Jean-Philippe Worth in 1896, after he had assumed control of his father Charles Frederick Worth’s couture house.
petitpalais.paris.fr, until the 7th of september, 2025;