Solange Marie Christine Louise de Labriffe was born in Amiens, in northern France, on 5 April 1898.
[10] In 1935, she helped Vogue editor-in-chief Edna Woolman Chase persuade French painter Christian Bérard – a close friend of hers – to work for the magazine as a fashion illustrator.
[23][24] Her husband, Jean de Noailles, was a member of the French Resistance during World War II and was arrested by the Gestapo on 22 January 1942, as a result of an anonymous denunciation.
[24][27] In 1952, the Paris military court sentenced Suzanne Provost, a Gestapo collaborator accused of having denounced Jean de Noailles, to 20 years of imprisonment.
[28] Knochen was sentenced to death by a Parisian military tribunal in 1954, but was later pardoned by President de Gaulle and released in 1962.
[29] French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, who had met Solange while he was working as an apprentice of Robert Piguet, described her as a "great beauty", who had "classic taste", and said that she always wore black because she had lost her husband and son in the war.