recherche

[ersatz-read.livejournal.com]

recherche, adj.  sought out with care; lavishly elegant and refined.

Etymology:  stolen directly from the French recherché, "carefully sought out". 
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu ("Remembrance of Things Past") is a novel by Marcel Proust. 
A la Recherche du Shoe Perdu is a collection from Andy Warhol.

In English, the word was used in the 19th century to denote obscure elegance.

Comments

[med_cat]

"They are not all successes, Watson," said he. "But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here's the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminum crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife. And here -- ah, now, this really is something a little recherche."

(Conan Doyle, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1983), "The Musgrave Ritual")