#poiret fashion

Marisa Berenson in a Paul Poiret dress as the Marchesa Luisa Casati for the  Proust Ball at the Rothschild family’s opulent Château de Ferrières in France, Photo by Cecil Beaton, December 1971.

Tribute to Marchesa Luisa Casati.

Marisa Berenson went as Marchesa Luisa Casati to The Proust Ball—the idea of costume designer Piero Tosi, with whom Berenson had just worked on the film Death in Venice. “You are not going to go like all those other women,” he proclaimed, instead dressing her in a Paul Poiret dress adorned with jeweled snakes, a curled red wig, black lipstick, and a black tiara. “When I walked in, nobody recognized me,” she says. “I had so much fun because I was totally sticking out from everybody else.

The Proust Ball (Le Bal Proust ), December 2, 1971.

The Proust Ball, thrown in honor of the 100th anniversary of Marcel Proust’s birth in 1871, might be considered Marie-Helene de Rothschild’s greatest triumph. Around 350 guests attended the extremely rich dinner at her home outside of Paris, the Château de Ferrières, with 350 or so more arriving in time for a second, later dinner. Among the guests were Audrey Hepburn, Princess Grace of Monaco, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton, while Cecil Beaton was the night’s photographer. French model and actress Marisa Berenson remembers the night, saying, “As soon as you arrived at Ferrières it was like going back in time, but more luxuriously with highly refined taste… . The women wore dresses, bodices, big headdresses, tiaras, lots of jewelry. It was truly the era of Proust.” (x)

Guests at her other balls included Yul Brynner, Brigitte Bardot, Gregory and Veronique Peck, Rudolf Nureyev, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, Cecil Beaton, Princess Grace of Monaco and the Duchess of Windsor.

Marchesa Luisa Casati in a fountain dress made of wires and lights by couturier Paul Poiret, at the Beaumont Ball held by the Count Etienne de Beaumont in Paris, 1924.

The Beaumont Ball in Paris 1924 (an event with a guest list so selective that Gabrielle Coco Chanel was excluded for being too ‘trade’), was a homage to Pablo Picasso and theCubists. The dress made entirely from wires and lights, it was too wide for the entrance to Beaumont’s ballroom: the artist Christian Bérard, who witnessed Marchesa Luisa Casati attempting to squeeze through the doorway, reported that she collapsed like a “smashed zeppelin”. (x)

De Beaumont’s fêtes reached an apex in 1924 with the ballet series Soirées de Paris, which took place at the Théâtre de la Cigale in Montmartre from May 17 to June 30, 1924. An homage to the review of the same name by Guillaume Apollinaire, the series included the scandalous ballet Mercure, which featured music composed by Erik Satie, sets and costumes designed by Pablo Picasso, and choreography devised by Léonide Massine. (x)