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The Met's Next Fashion Exhibit Will Please Royal Obsessives

Jacqueline de Ribes in 1965.
Jacqueline de Ribes in 1965.
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Countess, fashion designer, Parisian chic epitomized, object of both Richard Avedon's eye and Truman Capote's pen, muse to Yves Saint Laurent, and a hundred other impossibly glamorous qualifiers Jacqueline de Ribes will be the focus of the Met's Costume Institute's winter exhibit. Though we've known about it since December, we now know both the name of the show as well as what visitors can expect to find inside.

When it opens November 19th, WWD reports that "Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style" will feature 60 couture and ready-to-wear ensembles from de Ribes' archives, including looks by Armani, Balmain, Valentino, Bill Blass, John Galliano and others, as well as her own label, spanning from 1959 through the present.

Despite her glamorous persona, the exhibit will attempt to provide a "realistic" view of her life—after all, as a working woman, she often preferred blue jeans and a sweater, therefore daywear will reportedly be "at a minimum." Instead, expect to see ball gowns, even ones she made herself. De Ribes, who turns 85 this Bastille Day (July 14th), said of the exhibit, "I have given the Met the past six months of my life. Now the Met will not bother me."

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