"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (The Beautiful Woman without Mercy), an evening dress by Charles Frederick Worth, color stencil (pochoir), a Lady in evening dress with immortal bird Phoenix, Art Nouveau art by George Barbier. From the "Gazette du Bon Ton" (Paris, 1921) no.6, plate 47. The Marian Angell Boyer and Francis Boyer Library of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Copyright Philadelphia Museum of Art. Limited Edition 1997. Printed in Canada.

Art poster on high quality heavy paper. Entire plate is 11" x 14" [280mm x 355mm]; the design is 8.7/8" x 11" [226mm x 280mm]; fine condition.

Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) was an English fashion designer who founded the House of Worth, one of the foremost fashion houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is considered by many fashion historians to be the father of haute couture. Worth is also credited with revolutionizing the business of fashion. Established in Paris in 1858, his fashion salon soon attracted European royalty, and where they led monied society followed. An innovative designer, he adapted 19th-century dress to make it more suited to everyday life, with some changes said to be at the request of his most prestigious client Empress Eugenie. He was the first to use live models in order to promote his garments to clients, and to sew branded labels into his clothing; almost all clients visited his salon for a consultation and fitting - thereby turning the House of Worth into a society meeting point. By the end of his career, his fashion house employed 1,200 people and its impact on fashion taste was far-reaching.

As a biography for Museum of the City of New York notes: "Before Worth, the idea of a dress being recognizably the work of its creator didn't exist". He regarded clothing as an art, and for the first time, designed clothing, not for a client's taste, but based on his impression of what women should wear. He presented finished model designs to clients and dress buyers in similar fashion to the modern-day haute couture designer, also using live models. Worth was also the first designer to label his clothing, sewing his name into each garment he produced. This made him the first person to develop a distinct brand logo on clothing. Worth raised the status of dressmaking so that the designer-maker also became arbiter of what women should be wearing. After his death, the House of Worth continued to dominate Mode Parisienne. Its most successful years were those flanking 1900. During this span of time, women were ordering 20–30 gowns at a time. By 1897, clients could order a garment by phone, by mail, or by visiting one of Worth's branch stores in London, Cannes, or Biarritz. Worth displayed garments at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, as it had at earlier great exhibitions. The company's annual turnover was placed at around five million francs at the turn of the century.

George Barbier (1882-1932) was one of the great French illustrators of the early 20th century. Barbier was 29 years old when he mounted his first exhibition in 1911 and was subsequently swept to the forefront of his profession with commissions to design theater and ballet costumes, to illustrate books, and to produce haute couture fashion illustrations. For the next 20 years Barbier led a group from the Ecole des Beaux Arts who were nicknamed by Vogue "The Knights of the Bracelet"- a tribute to their fashionable and flamboyant mannerisms and style of dress. Included in this elite circle were Bernard Boutet de Monvel and Pierre Brissaud (both of whom were Barbier's first cousins), Paul Iribe, Georges Lepape, and Charles Martin. During his career Barbier also turned his hand to jewellery, glass and wallpaper design, wrote essays and many articles for the prestigious Gazette du bon ton. In the mid-1920s he worked with Erte to design sets and costumes for the Folies Bergere and in 1929 he wrote the introduction for Erte's acclaimed exhibition and achieved mainstream popularity through his regular appearances in L'Illustration magazine.

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