beau monde

plural beaux mondes

1. datedThe fashionable part of society.

   The beau monde went to the Maria II opera house to see and be seen.

   2018, David Birmingham, A Concise History of Portugal

   4 more examples

   ...and I am sure you will permit me to invite a friend or two, for you know I only deal with choice spirits, the élite of the beau monde.

   1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 223

   But the intellectuals one meets are something else again. I didn't behave well with the mental beau monde of Chicago.

   1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 57

   After finding the studio in West Kensington, and just before starting Pernel’s portrait, he spent an evening at the Kennedy’s where, he told Carrington excitedly, he met ‘a charming beau-monde blonde . . . who with her brightness and stoutness combined with some languishing glances, succeeded in half-ravishing me’.

   1985, Keith Clements, “Carrington”, in Henry Lamb: The Artist and his Friends, Bristol: Redcliffe, →ISBN, section V (Palestine and Poole 1914–1928), page 255

   Like the prodigal rastaquouères—those Latin American millionaires who flaunted their wealth in Paris in the hope of gaining entry into the beau monde—writers and intellectuals loved to put on cosmopolitan airs after visiting the French capital—they had left their Hispanic backwaters and could now swim with the tide of modern life.

   1992, Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America, London; New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 304

   Synonyms: beautiful people