Byline: By Jane Hall
French style-guru Madame Genevieve Antoine Dariaux knows a thing or two about grace, poise and elegance.
Indeed, a generation of women have Mme Dariaux to thank for helping transform then from gauche teenagers into sophisticated and stylish adults.
Trinny Woodall and Suzannah Constantine may have latterly cornered the market when it comes to telling women "what not to wear". But 40 years ago, Mme Dariaux was the person women seeking refinement turned to in their droves.
Her book, Elegance, in which she famously decreed that alligator-skin handbags should be "retired at 5pm", was the bestselling style-Bible of its day.
Now, at the age of 89, both Mme Dariaux and her timeless secrets of style are enjoying a comeback.
Elegance - renamed A Guide to Elegance - has been republished by HarperCollins as "an educating classic for the present generation".
Its comeback has been inspired by the publication last summer of Kathleen Tessaro's novel, also Elegance, whose heroine, Louise Canova, stumbles over a faded copy of Mme Dariaux's tome in a second-hand bookshop.
When Louise starts to follow Madame's advice, her life is transformed. From accessories to zippers, there is nothing Madame cannot advise upon, including types of husband (the blind, the ideal, the dictator) and shopping with girlfriends (don't).
A bestseller in its own right, Tessaro's poignantly funny debut novel brought Mme Gucci Necklace Dariaux to a new audience.
Whether the 21st-Century woman is likely to embrace Mme Dariaux's words of wisdom remains to be seen. She believes, among other things, that sandals shouldn't be worn in the city, that teenagers shouldn't carry umbrellas before the age of 15 and that pierced ears are "unthinkable for an elegant woman and even more dreadful for a young girl".
She calls pierced noses - or any other part of the body for that matter - "a crime," and adds: "Horrible. A Horrible horrible thing. I watch the television sometimes now and I do not know what country, what planet I am living on. Boots! It makes me very sad."
Though it is 40 years since Elegance was first published, Mme Dariaux says her basic philosophy is still valid.
It rests on two essential beliefs. The first that: "No woman ever lacked elegance because of an excess of simplicity," and the second that "One of the basic rules of elegance is to discover your own style and remain faithful to it."
Audrey Hepburn knew this. As did Grace Kelly.
Mme Dariaux says: "My mission has always been to help plain women become elegant women. And the way to do that is the same now as it was then. The fashions might have changed but the rules of elegance are the same."
Raised in Paris - she now lives in the South of France - Mme Dariaux's own sense of elegance was kindled by her mother.
"She came from a long line of artists and intellectuals," Mme Dariaux says.
"She knew the importance of clothes and she adored to dress me up."
Indeed, even as a child she preferred to accompany her mother to the dressmaker's rather than go to the movies.
Cheap christian audigier But it was an accident in 1946, shortly after her marriage at the age of 21 to George Antoine, a publisher, that took Mme
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