Caroline Reboux

Who was Caroline Reboux?

Caroline Reboux was a well known Parisian milliner and French fashion designer. She had white hair and a "girlish" look.

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.