HIGH FASHION AND MODESTY LIFE. ANDRÉ BECQ DE FOUQUIÈRES (1874-1959) DOUCET, LANVIN, MOLYNEUX, POIRET OR WORTH BY “L’ARBITRE DES ÉLÉGANCES” (“THE ARBITER OF ELEGANCE”)

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Set of manuscripts. Writer and worldly speaker, André de Fouquières, brother of a chief of protocol at the Élysée Palace, cultivated royalist friendships and, as host of all the great receptions, became a leading authority on matters of elegance. • Texts by André de Fouquières (including about 150 autograph pp.) : – “Fashion conference written for New York”. Signed autograph manuscript. 45 pp. in-folio. – “Conference. Notes of elegance about fashion”. Signed autograph manuscript. 40 pp. in-folio. These lectures include notes on the great fashion houses of the interwar period. – “Worldly life in Paris.” Autograph manuscript. March 1930 (from a note of the time by another hand). 11 pp. in-folio. Chronicle of social events in Paris, notably at the Élysée Palace. – “Worldly life in Paris.” Typewriting of the above text. 8 pp. in-folio. With autograph summary. 1/2 p. in-folio. – (Souvenirs). Autograph notes. 50 pp. in-folio. On personalities like Gyp or Pierre Loti. – [The wine of Champagne]. Autograph manuscript. 9 pp. in-4. – [The dandyism]. Signed autograph letter. 1910. Concerning the conference he dedicated to this subject. 3 pp. in-8. – “The elegant woman in 1937”. Typescript. 8 pp. 1/4 in-folio. – Enclosed are invitations and programmes for a conference on Chinese poetry that André de Fouquières, a graduate of the Institute of Oriental Languages, held in 1908. • About 110 letters and cards received by André de Fouquières, offering an interesting panorama of the great world at the beginning of the 20th century. Among his correspondents was Kipling’s writer and translator, Robert d’Humières.