Maharani Chic: The Indian Princesses Who Defied Convention & Influenced Parisian Style

Behind India’s Art Deco palaces and the salons of Paris’ storied couture houses, lies an alternative narrative about the French luxury trade. One which has attracted a cosmopolitan clientele from the Global South since its early beginnings. Among them was a group of Jazz Age Maharanis, who became important clients of Paris’ couture houses during the 1920s and ’30s. Unconventional for their time, these style icons formed an unlikely bridge between India and France through their hybrid lifestyles. Their patronage and sartorial choices would not only influence the tastes of Parisian society, but fuel the emergence of French luxury houses that catered to their needs; producing a hybrid form of luxury fusing Indian refinement with French savoir faire. Alex Aubry, Director of SAIC’s Fashion Resource Center, explores this overlooked chapter in the history of haute couture, through a visually immersive lecture layering imagery, film, and press clippings.

Presentation and light appetizers at Union League Club of Chicago, 65 W. Jackson Blvd.

Fee: $40.

You must register at chicagodeco.org by 5:30 pm Friday, September 26.

Alex Aubry is the Director of the Fashion Resource Center at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute since 2017. His research, publishing, and curatorial work centers the Global South within histories of French haute couture. He served as the International Features Editor for Harper’s Bazaar Arabia for 12 years where he covered art, culture, and design in the MENA region and its diaspora. Alex also served as the Curatorial Director of the “Art of Heritage Collection of Saudi Material Culture” from 2013–16. He has contributed to books on museum development and collecting in the Arabian Gulf region, in addition to exhibition catalogues such as Contemporary Muslim Fashions at San Francisco’s de Young Museum (2018), the Lebanese artist Huguette Caland’s collaboration with Pierre Cardin for her retrospective at Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum (2025), and an essay exploring the history of non-Western patronage at the House of Worth for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Worth: Inventing Haute Couture, at Paris’ Petit Palais Museum (2025).