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Amazing Grace: the Kelly look returns to Monaco
2011-06-21 15:07
Last year the Guardian Weekend magazine featured actress Rosamund Pike re-creating the Grace Kelly look in Monaco, wearing Stella McCartney and Yves St Laurent, and sporting an Hermes 'Kelly' bag, of course.
Earlier in the year the principality was also the location for Mario Testino's photo-shoot of Claudia Schiffer for the Salvatore Ferragamo Spring/Summer 2010 Collection campaign, which was based on the colours and themes of Kelly's Hollywood movies.
Wearing Ferragamo's glamorous outfits, bags and shoes, the supermodel even made use of the original car from 'To Catch a Thief', the Hitchcock thriller filmed on the Cote d'Azur which first brought Kelly to Monaco.
Then, in September last year a spectacular collection of Kelly's dresses was put on display at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in a new exhibition entitled Grace Kelly - Style Icon.
Divided into two sections, The Actress and The Bride, the display charted Grace Kelly's journey from her days as Hollywood's most popular star in the 1950s to her real-life role as Princess Grace of Monaco, by presenting over fifty of her outfits along with hats, jewellery and other accessories including the original Hermès Kelly bag.
This fascinating exhibition included dresses from Rear Window and High Society, as well as the gown which Grace wore to accept the 1955 Academy Award for best actress in 'The Country Girl'. To put the collection in context, the display also showed film clips and posters, photographs, and Kelly's Oscar statuette.
One of the centrepieces of the show was the lace ensemble worn at her marriage to Prince Rainier in 1956, and alongside it were thirty-five haute couture gowns from the sixties and seventies by her favourite designers, including Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Yves St Laurent.