A style for the ages

Duke, an only child who inherited $80 million before she turned 13 from her family's vast tobacco and electricity holdings, was also a woman who shied away from the spotlight, as much as a woman of her wealth and status was able. This is partially why I felt guilty walking through her home here last week. Would Duke have approved of tourists snapping pictures in her bedroom, or ogling the stunning view of the rocky Atlantic coast from the solarium where she once sipped her morning coffee?

Duke was a matron of another era, which is precisely the reason why I'm traipsing through her home. Rough Point, the Newport mansion where she lived annually from May to November, is hosting an exhibition of her clothing. Called "Shop Like an Heiress: Buying Fashion in the 20th Century," the exhibition is a bit like peering into Duke's closet - again, here's that intrusive feeling - through her years of dinner parties and exclusive lunches. When she died in 1993, she left more than 9,000 pieces of clothing, mostly stashed away in the closets of her 2,700-acre New Jersey estate. As you can imagine, she had no shortage of estates or closets to store her clothes.

"She didn't throw anything out," exhibit curator Kristen Costa tells me as we walk through Rough Point's two galleries that have been filled with custom pieces from the 1940s to the 1990s. "In many ways she was ahead of her time in how she shopped and the styles that she wore."

The clothing in the galleries leaves no doubt as to Duke's wealth, but it also speaks to the fact that she had incredible taste. Costa gets particularly excited when we approach a Cristobal Balenciaga jacket from 1950 that was handcrafted of silk, sequins, and straw.

"This piece for me is the most magical in the gallery," Costa says. "Doris Duke was one of his favorite clients. So the likelihood of him having touched this garment is pretty good."

The entire exhibition speaks of another time. Not only did designers carefully craft pieces for their favorite clients, but fashion shows were less about getting starlets to sit in the front row and more about presenting collections that women like Duke would purchase, wear for a season, and then stash away for posterity. It's romantic to think of a time when designers such as Balenciaga, Christian Dior, and Emilio Pucci would host shows for exclusive clients in their salons. These days, fashion shows are cramped affairs with thousands of spectators alongside Hollywood ingenues (plus Rachel Zoe), who are shopping for dresses to wear to the Golden Globes.

"It's sad that it's a lost art," says Costa.

Not that Duke didn't have an occasional lapse of judgment. A Pucci pant suit from the 1960s looks a bit like something worn for catching an early bird special in Boca Raton circa 1968 rather than lounging about her Hawaiian estate. But what is most remarkable about Duke's style was the fact that she never stopped attending fashion shows in New York, Paris, and Milan. She bought from Dior in the 1940s, Givenchy in the 1950s, Mary Quant in the 1960s, and Halston in the 1970s. Even when she was well into her 60s and 70s she was making the scene at Studio 54 and still looking impeccable. It's no wonder that both Lauren Bacall and Susan Sarandon have played the heiress in two separate made-for-TV movies. For me, it was worth the drive to Newport alone to see a photo from the front row of an early 1980s Halston show that featured Duke sitting alongside Carol Channing, Liza Minnelli, and Martha Graham.

Duke gave away more than $400 million in her lifetime - in addition to being a savvy dresser, she was also a wise investor - but by saving the historic contents of her closet, she's given the world something else: a rare glimpse into the shopping habits of the rich and tasteful.

Kristen Costa gives a lecture on "Shop Like an Heiress" at Rough Point on May 12 at 5:30 p.m. $5.

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.