Monday, Feb. 6, the Key West Friends of the Library will welcome David Garrard Lowe to the podium. The lecture series takes place at the Key West Theater, 512 Eaton St. Admission is free. The presentation is at 6:00 p.m., but seating begins at 5:30 on a first come first served basis.

Mr. Lowe is a well-regarded lecturer, cultural historian, and author. His
articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, American Heritage, House & Garden, and City Journal, amongst other publications. His books include Stanford White’s New York, Lost Chicago, Chicago Interiors, Beaux Arts New York, and Art Deco New York.

He has lectured widely in the United States and Europe, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Newport Preservation Society, the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, on the Queen Mary 2, and on cruises in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. His subjects range from the villas of Andrea Palladio, to Americans in Paris, to Coco Chanel, to the great ocean liners.

He has also created words-and-music tributes to both Noel Coward and Cole Porter.

Mr. Lowe will speak about one of the most extraordinary figures to occupy the French throne: María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick. Born in Spain in 1826, she became Empress of France when she married Napoleon III in 1853. Strikingly attractive, Eugénie was an important ally of Paris’s city planner, Baron Haussmann. She was also, through her patronage of Charles Frederick Worth, the founder of French haute-couture. As an early customer of the House of Guerlain, she helped make French scent le dernier cri. Her need for hat boxes, jewel cases, and trunks propelled malletier Louis Vuitton to the top of the luggage trade. This richly illustrated talk will delineate this magnificent tale, ending with the Imperial family’s exile in England.

For more information go to http://friendsofthekeywestlibrary.org and click on lecture series.