Nadia AlbertiniRébé : Broderies Haute-couture

“René Bégué, was the founder of Rébé, whose embroideries were to supply designers in the field of haute couture for over half a century. René Bégué was a very talented designer and a brilliant colourist, driven by a taste for splendour, who learned his trade from Poiret and Paquin. Andrée Pichard, whom René met in the early 1920s and who was to become his partner and wife, began her career as a milliner and had an excellent knowledge of fabrics and a particular gift for the uninhibited arrangement of materials. Together they formed an exceptional duo that would supply the greatest haute couture houses with dazzling creations. Rébé is a veritable nugget of French haute couture and textile heritage, still unknown to the general public but whose name resonates like a myth among couturiers, more than fifty years after the workshop closed. By studying sketches, samples, photographs and models preserved in private and public archives, the author, Nadia Albertini, retraces for us this fascinating history. To do this, she has drawn her sources from the fashion magazines of the time (Vogue, L’Officiel de la Mode, Harpers’ Bazaar, etc.), from the archives left by Rébé at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, at the Musée du Pays Rabastinois, and from those kept by the houses of Balenciaga, Dior, Fath, Givenchy, Lanvin, Roger Vivier, Swarovski, Yves Saint Laurent, etc. Nadia Albertini is a fashion historian. An embroiderer herself, she works with the greatest fashion houses of today… The research she has carried out on Rébé for almost twenty years has also led her to meet nine of the master embroiderer’s former collaborators. Their testimonies plunge us into the atmosphere of the art craft workshops of the time and enlighten us on the unique methods and techniques in use at the time.”