- Joined
- Jul 24, 2010
- Messages
- 103,112
- Reaction score
- 67,646
PARIS — Countess Jacqueline de Ribes, the socialite once dubbed “The Last Queen of Paris” by Valentino Garavani, has died at the age of 96.
She passed away in Switzerland on Tuesday, according to event organizer Françoise Dumas, who had known her since the late 1960s and worked with her on numerous soirées, most recently the annual fundraising gala for the Société des Amis des Musée d’Orsay.
“The last grande dame of Paris is gone,” Dumas told WWD. “She carried the art of living and savoir-vivre to new heights. With her, a bit of that Proustian Paris is disappearing too.”
Considered by many to be the epitome of Parisian elegance, de Ribes was among the Swans written about by Truman Capote and was photographed by Richard Avedon.
De Ribes was closely covered by WWD, which tracked her wardrobe choices and was present at the launch of her fashion collection in 1983.
“After years of whipping up dresses for herself and her friends, Jacqueline de Ribes has decided to take the plunge,” WWD wrote alongside photographs of the aristocrat modeling the looks herself in her sprawling 19th-century town house.
The line, described as “a couture collection of after-five clothes for the American market,” made its debut six days later at New York’s Regency Hotel — although close friend Yves Saint Laurent was given an earlier, private preview. “I wanted to show the secret to him,” de Ribes explained. “We share the same intellectual rigor about aesthetics.”
As for why she opted to debut the collection in America, the Frenchwoman noted, “Every designer offers a personality and a style. Mine is simplicity and sophistication and I think Americans will appreciate that. They’ve always been very nice to me.”
Garavani was among the designers who paid tribute to her.
“I mourn the passing of Jacqueline de Ribes, a dear friend whose presence accompanied me throughout my life. As a young designer at Jean Dessès, I would visit her with drawings for a newspaper, and she welcomed me into the magnificence of her hôtel particulier with superb elegance and grace,” he recalled.
“I have carried those memories with me ever since. She will be deeply missed, and it pains me to know that I will never again have the thought that I might see her alive,” he added.
The countess was the subject of an exhibition, “Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in 2015, drawing close to 195,000 visitors.
“In talking with her, she didn’t want a show about herself. She wanted it to be more about a way of life that is disappearing,” Harold Koda, curator in charge of The Costume Institute, said at the time.
“If you were in her family’s hôtel particulier you were just kind of immersed in this grandeur — there are these pieces of furniture, these 18th-century prints, there are paintings. But then as we started to work, I thought, even though you see her in all of these situations, she has a very private family life; her children, her husband, the dinner parties with heads of state — none of that is documented. It’s just because they were private. What you see is the public life, which led her very seamlessly to becoming a designer,” he added.
The couple’s collection, comprising paintings and drawings from the 17th to the 19th centuries, sculpture, furniture and works of art, was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in 2019. The collection was distinguished by its quality, state of preservation and provenance, with some pieces directly handed down from Queen Marie Antoinette.
Decorator Jacques Grange, a close friend, mourned the loss of a way of life. “She belonged to a high society that has vanished with her. Elegance, style, culture, beauty — the last of the Swans,” he told WWD.
Fearless about fashion and color, de Ribes also amassed a couture collection that included pieces from Saint Laurent, Pierre Balmain, Bill Blass, Marc Bohan for Dior, Madame Grès, Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier, whose spring 1999 haute couture collection was inspired by her.
“Comtesse de Ribes is for me the incarnation of Parisian chic. She was an icon and the Avedon portraits of her made me love fashion,” Gaultier told WWD.
“It was only natural that I dedicated a couture collection to her, ‘Divine Jacqueline.’ It was the least I could do to pay homage to her elegance and style. She was an inspiration to all of us,” he added.
In a 1959 profile, WWD described her as an “individualist” fond of tweaking designer looks to her liking. “She will not wear whatever is seen everywhere and on everybody,” it said, noting her penchant for masculine-cut jackets, and aversion to anything considered “glamorous” or “sexy.”
“The word that applies best to Mme. De Ribes’ taste for clothes is ‘dramatic.’ She loves the theater and thinks that ‘women should dress as if they were putting on a show,’” it added.
De Ribes donated the contents of her wardrobe to Palais Galliera, the fashion museum backed by Paris City Hall, Dumas said. “She was so proud to see her name on the facade of the Met. I hope we will be able to pay tribute to her in Paris also,” she said.
After the death of her husband, banker Vicomte Édouard de Ribes, in 2013, she succeeded him as honorary president of the friends of the Musée d’Orsay. She was also active in theater and film production, and supported causes including UNICEF and the League Against Cancer.
De Ribes is survived by a daughter, Elisabeth, and a son, Jean, as well as her granddaughter Alix. Details of funeral services were not immediately available.
wwd
