82 SEPTEMBER 2019 | TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM
@PIERRESNAPS^(LADY^GAGA)^STYLE SPY
LADY GAGA
& the
190-Year-Old
PURSE
A confident woman doesn’t need a label to signal taste or
stature. A Belgian handbag in her arms says it all. BY ERIK MAZA
N
ot too long ago, two elegant women
passed each other in a train station
in Paris. One of them was Christina
Zeller, who is the wife of Prince Frédéric de
Broglie and also happens to be creative direc-
tor of the Belgian leather goods brand Del-
vaux. She couldn’t help noticing the petite
“D” logo on the purse carried by the chicstranger on the platform. “You have a nice
bag,” Zeller told her. “She looked at me and
said, ‘You too.’”
For the women who shop Delvaux, a tony
crew that includes Lady Gaga and every Bel-
gian royal since 1883 (when the label was first
appointed Purveyor to the Court), the discre-
tion of Delvaux’s designs has always been partof the appeal, a visual shorthand intelligible
only to those in the know. “It’s like belonging
to a private club,” Zeller says. A sort of inter-
national secret society, these women have a
new mecca in the heart of Brussels, where a
museum to the art of subtle luxury, celebrat-
ing the 190-year history of the label, will open
in early September.
Delvaux makes the bold claim that it was
the inventor of the modern handbag—it regis-
tered a patent in 1908—and the new museum,
located inside the company’s headquarters,
which are in a former army barracks in the
Arsenal district and were designed by Martin
Margiela’s visual guru, Bob Verhelst, makes
a convincing case, displaying some 3,000
pieces from the Delvaux archives, including
the company’s best-known model, the lady-
like Le Brillant, which has been reimagined
as many times as Chanel’s little black dress.
Zeller joined in 2011, coming from
Givenchy (where, as head of accessories, she
played a part in creating such blockbusters as
the Nightingale) just as Delvaux’s parent com-
pany, First Heritage Brands, which is owned
in part by the Hong Kong billionaire brothers
Victor and William Fung, began to drag thedemure maison into the limelight. (The com-
pany is only Delvaux’s third proprietor, after
the founders and the Schwennicke family.)
First Heritage’s plans for worldwide expan-
sion culminated with the opening of a Del-
vaux flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York,
on the ground floor of the Sherry-Netherland
building. “When you’re the best you don’t need
to emphasize it,” Zeller says. “Without arrogance,
we have the attitude that we have the most beau-
tiful bag, and the quality speaks for itself.”
On the night before this year’s Met Gala,
Lady Gaga swanned out of the Mark in a
voluminous Marc Jacobs gown, a headpiece,
and vertiginous leather boots. It was a lot of
look, and yet somehow the eye was drawn to
the whimsical, itty-bitty purse dangling from
her manicured fingertips. Connoisseurs didn’t
need a handbook to immediately recognize
Le Brillant in the flesh. The fall edition of
Le Brillant comes in
sizes ranging from
charms (Lady Gaga
holds one here) to
extra-extra-large.
DELVA U X BRILLANT
CHARMS BLACK BEAUTY
BAG ($1,250), DELVAUX
NYC, 212-471-3195NEXT STOP: BRUSSELS!
Musée Delvaux, housed inside a 19th-century
Belgian army barracks, opens to the public in
early September, and townandcountrymag
.com has an exclusive early look inside the
4,844-square-foot fashion diorama.