Château Couture

FANFAIR

GIVENCHY CELEBRATES FRENCH FASHION AND ARCHITECTURE

t will be like a ball in a private house,” says the retired French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, who, at age 83, has curated an exhibition of evening clothes by three of the Paris couture’s most rarefied creators— the late Cristobal Balenciaga, Philippe Venet, and Givenchy himself—at the Chateau de Haroue, in the Lorraine region of France. Givenchy’s plan for the show, which runs from May 6 to August 17, sets some 40 dresses by the three couturiers in the chateau’s impeccably maintained first-floor reception rooms, which hold one of the finest collections of French royal furniture still in private hands. Two standouts: the minktrimmed wedding dress Balenciaga made for Queen Fabiola of Belgium in 1960 and the black duchesse-satin Givenchy gown worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The 82-room Chateau de Haroue itself is well worth the four-hour drive from Paris. Owned by the BeauvauCraon family since its construction, in 1720, it was designed to reflect the divisions of the calendar, with 365 windows, 52 chimneys, 12 towers, and four bridges. Its current occupant, Princess Minnie de Beauvau-Craon, says, “I’m so excited that Hubert de Givenchy, who represents the epitome of French taste, got it into his mind to make this alliance between French fashion and a French historical monument. The point of it all is to blow up Haroue to an international level.”

BOB COLACELLO