Caroline Reboux
| Caroline Reboux | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1837 Paris, France |
| Died | 1927 |
| Resting place | France |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | fashion designer |
| Known for | famous French milliner |
Caroline Reboux (1837–1927) was a well-known Parisian milliner and French fashion designer.
Reboux made an art form out of high fashion hats which were re-emerging in France to supplant the bonnet in the mid-19th century. She promoted the hat as an essential accessory for women's fashion.
Like many of her customers, Reboux was self-invented: she put it about that she was the fourth child of an impoverished noblewoman and a man of letters, who was orphaned and came to Paris to live.
Reboux, the "Queen of the Milliners." made a name for herself in millinery in the later part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century in Europe and the United States. She employed as many as 150 workwomen at any one time. She is also closely associated with the origins of haute couture and her hat designs ranked at the same level as that custom fashion.
Reboux opened a shop at 9, Avenue Matignon, Paris, in 1865 where she worked throughout her life. Retaining this shop as her base, she opened other stores in Paris and London. Her most famous address of the late 19th century and early 20th century was located at 23 Rue de la Paix. She assisted others that she trained to open shops in New York and Chicago. She was known for over fifty years as the queen of creative fashion hats. Her designs were as much sought after as those of Charles Frederick Worth, considered the father of haute couture.
Reboux was the first person in fashion design to add a veil to a woman’s hat. She also started the vogue of colored veils. Reboux made many fashionable hats for the theater.
Reboux is often mistakenly credited as the "inventor" of the cloche hat, although millinery historians would agree that French milliner Lucy Hamar must share in that credit, as both she and Reboux introduced this style sometime around the year 1914. Reboux is also given credit for designing the iconic, unstructured, felt cloche "helmet" hat which first appeared in the 1920s. Reboux would create the hat by placing a length of felt on a customer's head and then cutting and folding it to shape. She was always one of the leading exponents of the form.
Reboux also did innovative unique models up-dating past modes such as the large-brimmed straws known as Gainsborough hats, and the turban-like toques in the manner of Mme Vigée-Lebrun's sitters.
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