It was the first time in 50 years that any such event had taken place.

And if the thought of a history lesson to some might seem tedious, the Couture Lingerie Collection designed by Giovanni Bedin and launched on the same occasion, most definitely was not.

A top floor Suite in the splendidly frescoed Hôtel Meurice, with windows overlooking the Tuileries Gardens, was the setting for the presentation.

Charles Worth, and Englishman by birth, is recognized as the founder of the French Couture tradition.

He was the first designer to stage catwalks for his collections, and also the first to use gas lighting at his Boutique at 7, rue de la Paix in Paris. His goal was to obtain "ballroom lighting" for his clients arriving for fittings.

The concept of launching a new line based on 150 year old designs is certainly intriguing.

Mounir Moufarrige, a stockholder of Worth, Paris explains, Paris explains "I asked Giovanni Bedin, an Italian designer, to imagine what Pauline de Metternich, the Empress Eugénie de Montijo, Sarah Bernhardt, and others of the period 1845-1895 might have worn beneath the folds of the Haute Couture created for them by Mr. Worth. In the absence of Lingerie, women of the époque wore undershirts. Women of today no longer wear 19th century bustlesŠbut they can wear what would have been the lingerie of the time, modernized."

So Giovanni Bedin, a onetime assistant to Karl Lagerfeld, set to work designing a collection based on historical models, and in the process, he also recreated several of Worth's signature pieces.

Giovanni Bedin (center) with Models

Those reproductions, together with one original, were put on display beside the modern lingerie.

If the historical dresses looked right out of a Monet painting, or seemed as if they might have been worn to the premier of Debussy's "L'Après-midi d'une Faune", the sexy collection of lingerie unquestionably belonged to the 21st century.

Giovanni Bedin told FW, "The hard part was not really constructing the designs based on historical models, but finding somebody capable of producing them. In this day and age, that isn't so easy."

Easy or not, the final product was well Worth the effort.

Worth, Paris

Worth, Paris