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CANNES, France (AP) — Grace Kelly can bring to mind several things: an Oscar-winning Hollywood actress, a mother, a princess and a Nicole Kidman movie premiering at the Cannes Film Festival.
But to many, she will always be one of the world's greatest fashion icons.
Kidman's "Grace of Monaco" is bringing focus anew on Kelly's stylish impact. The day the Hitchcock blonde married Monegasque Prince Rainier in April 1956, it forever sealed the links between Monaco, the French Riviera and glamour.
In the wedding ceremony, attended by Ava Gardner, Cary Grant and David Niven, Kelly walked the aisle in a hand-sewn ivory dress made up of 300 yards of antique Brussels rose-point lace sent by MGM studios and shook up the staid royal family.
The Hermes saddlebag she carried to hide her royal pregnancy bump was named after her and today the "Kelly bag" still has one of the longest waiting lists in the world and ensured that, in 1960, Princess Grace would become one of the only royals to enter the "International Best Dressed List."
The "Grace Kelly Look" as Women's Wear Daily branded it in the 1950s — a fresh, natural glamour — has lived on to this today to influence the fashion world. And the power her legacy still wields to bring glamour to the French Riviera region will be revisited Wednesday as celebrities throng to the world premiere "Grace of Monaco."
— Thomas Adamson, AP Writer (Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP)
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