MITZAH BRICARD DRIPPING WITH RUBIES : AN ACCOUNT BY BILL CUNNINGHAM

Excerpt from Bill Cunningham's book Fashion Climbing

Page 198

Halfway through the Dior collection, Dior's Directress, Madame Bricard, entered. One of the three ladies who started with Dior sixteen years earlier and was now considered the dowager duchess of fashion, she was a raving beauty at the turn of the century, a very grand demimondaine whom kings, princes, and dukes, showered with jewels.  Madame made her appearance at the top of the grand stairway and magnetized my eyes for the rest of the collection, as this extraordinary woman, sparking with every conceivable device that forms the mystery of fashion, stood like a vision from one of the great French novels, the Madame Bovery of the 1960's  A tall baby-blue felt cone hat wrapped in yards of spidery black veil exposed marcelled black curls over each ear, which were hung with pearls and blood-red rubies from the hat edge. Over the right eye danged a brooch with a pearl the size of a nightingale's egg.  A pearl hatpin anchored the seductive veiling, which shadowed a face so preserved by the art of cosmetics, the yes lacquered and painted in silver fish streaks of green, dropped under the weight of inch-long lashes that served to shade the mystic sapphire blue of her eyes.  Everyone in the room was riveted to this fascinating woman, whose delicate mouth darted out like a lovebird.....

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http://thecoincidentaldandy.blogspot.com/2018/11/mitzah-bricard-christian-diors.html   Mitzah Bricard (whose birth-name was Germaine Louise Neustadtl),