Madeleine Chéruit

(1866-1955)

French fashion designer

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Madame Louise Chéruit (1866-1955), born Louise Lemaire, often erroneously called Mme Madeleine Chéruit, was among the foremost couturiers of her generation, and one of the first women to control a major French fashion house. Her salon operated in the Place Vendôme in Paris under the name Chéruit from 1906 to 1935. Chéruit is best remembered today as the subject of a number of portraits by Paul César Helleu, with whom she conducted an affair before opening her couture house and for the appearance of her name in two celebrated works of literature, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (1910) and Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies (1930). Her name is also frequently associated with the fashion photography of Edward Steichen whose favorite model, Marion Morehouse, often wore gowns from the house of Chéruit for Vogue magazine in the 1920s. One particular Steichen image has become iconic: Morehouse in a jet-beaded black net Chéruit dress, first published in 1927.