Grace Kelly is the former Princess of Monaco, an actress and enduring fashion and style icon.

Mementos and photographs of Grace Kelly were featured in the Bendigo Art Gallery. The exhibit also features film excerpts and family photographs are woven in amongst Yves Saint Laurent, Dior and Givenchy gowns in a sartorial exploration of Grace Kelly's multilayered identity.

According to the senior curator of the gallery Tansin Curtin, "We really wanted to make her quite human, to give the audience a view of her not just as a Hollywood star or as royalty, but also as a mother, and a wife, and a very important part of the history of Monaco. The exhibition adds a bit more of a holistic approach to her and her style."

Curtin helped in assembling and organizing around 100 pieces of clothing and jewelry that showed the four aspects of Grace Kelly's identity - as a princess, a bride, an actress and an enduring style icon - to portray Grace Kelly more than a celebrity who traded a successful film career for love and the royalty.

The curator also added more three dresses to the original collection in the exhibition. The dress is a pastel green Maggy Rouff evening gown, an official copy of Kelly's wedding dress designed by US designer Edith Head, and the gown worn at the centenary celebration of the kingdom of Monaco.

The exhibition was opened last week by Princess Charlene of Monaco, whose custom Swarovski-beaded blush dress by Sydney designer Johanna Johnson would have done her mother-in-law proud.