JACQUELINE DE RIBES AND THE ART OF BEING YOURSELF

The late vicomtesse blazed her own trail – in style and in life.

Jacqueline often highlighted her magnificent profile in portraits. Photo: Richard Avedon.

The last queen of Paris is gone. Jacqueline de Ribes, the vicomtesse and style icon of several decades, died this week at the age of 96. For years, her homes and her immaculately bedecked figure were the focus of major magazine spreads and envious chatter, her good taste oozing from every slick image. And yet it wasn’t the couture or silk upholstery that made her stand apart in a sea of wealthy socialites.

It’s easy to talk about taste in terms of money, what one can afford functioning as a sort of barometer for where one lands on that spectrum. But taste is really about values and principles. That’s why it can’t be bought. When it becomes finely honed, it extends directly to the heart of who we are.

Photo: Richard Avedon.

If you look at Jacqueline through the years, it quickly becomes clear that she looked exactly like herself in every way, at every turn. At some point, the clothes she wore stopped being Yves Saint Laurent and Dior creations and transmuted themselves into Jacqueline originals. It was impossible to imagine anyone else wearing them, let alone looking as exquisite.

And then there was Jaqueline herself. You can’t ignore that nose with its unapologetic dorsal hump. In a time when such a feature is considered an issue to be fixed, the act of highlighting it in nearly every photograph – a profile shot was her bread and butter, something Avedon and all the greats knew – feels like an act of elegant rebellion the caliber of which I’ve rarely witnessed, a saber sheathed in velvet.

The truth is, the most arrestingly beautiful people aren’t born that way. They become that way through their thoughts and actions. As Anjelica Huston once so rightly proclaimed, as one ages, “you get the face you deserve.” Jacqueline’s face was a faceted gem, every angle chiseled in sharp relief, each element unusual yet utterly harmonious in composition. The most advanced AI or most experienced plastic surgeon could never conceive of such a structure.

Tired of being an avatar for other people’s work, she eventually became a designer in her own right. Jacqueline’s extensive experience as a client and collaborator was a training ground for her professional third act. Unrelenting health issues forced her to shutter the business in 1995 after a twelve-year run despite its commercial success. Her public appearances dwindled in the following years, but she remained a fixture of elite Parisian circles and on the moodboards of countless designers. Perhaps more than anything, her death marks the end of an epoch, a time when a certain kind of glamour and individuality were worth aspiring to. That’s something worth grieving all on its own.

Jacqueline wearing a dress of her own design, 1983. Photo: Fairchild Archive/WWD.