The Vicomtesse of the Bizarre

Marie-Laure de Noailles, Vicomtesse de Noailles was one of the 20th century's most daring and influential patrons of the arts, noted for her associations with Salvador Dalí, Balthus, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, Francis Poulenc, Jean Hugo, Jean-Michel Frank and others as well as her tempestuous life and eccentric personality. She and her husband financed Ray's film Les Mystères du Château de Dé (1929), Poulenc's Aubade (1929), Buñuel and Dalí's film L'Âge d'Or (1930), and Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (1930).

Marie-Laure de Noailles and her husband lived in the fabled hôtel particulier at 11 Place des États-Unis in Paris, which was built by her grandfather Bischoffsheim. Its interiors were redecorated in the 1920s by French minimalist designer Jean-Michel Frank. The house is now the Musée Baccarat and the headquarters of Baccarat, the crystal company.

The Beau of the Ball

Charles de Beistegui was an eccentric multi-millionaire art collector and interior decorator and one of the most flamboyant characters of mid-20th century European life, whose passport was Spanish and whose wealth came from his family's Mexican silver mines. The cash reservoir allowed de Beistegui to indulge himself in the homes he decorated, such as his Chateau de Groussay and the 17th century Palace Labia in Venice.

In 1951 Beistegui held a masked costume ball in Venice, which he called Le Bal Oriental. It was one of the last truly spectacular events in that famous palazzo, and it was one of the largest and most lavish social events of the 20th century. The truly upper crust of international society attended in costumes custom made for the event. The host wore scarlet robes and a long curling wig, and his normal height was raised a full 16 inches by platform soles. Cecil Beaton's photographs of the ball display an almost surreal society, reminiscent of Venetian life immediately before the fall of the republic at the end of the 18th century.

Everyone's Favorite Sister

Sister Parish was an American interior decorator and socialite. She was the first interior designer brought in to decorate the Kennedy White House. Parish's influence can still be seen, particularly in the Family Dining Room and Yellow Oval Room.

A stately and occasionally eccentric white-haired lady, Parish was the design partner of Albert Hadley, a Tennessee-born decorator, with whom she co-founded Parish-Hadley Associates in 1962. Parish was known for her homey, cluttered traditionalism and passion for patchwork quilts, painted furniture, and red-lacquer secretaries.

She was partial to the understated English country house look, and her combinations of Colefax and Fowler chintzes, overstuffed armchairs, and brocade sofas with such unexpected items as patchwork quilts, four-poster beds, knitted throws, and rag rugs led to her being credited with ushering in what became known as American country style during the 1960s.

The True Swan

Gianni Agnelli was the head of the rich, powerful, and much speculated-about Fiat clan. But no one has personified that family's enduring elegance better than Marella Agnelli, Gianni’s wife. In 1953, Richard Avedon shot and hand-altered a famous portrait of the half-American, half-Neopolitan princess to emphasize the extraordinary length of what renowned fashion illustrator Joe Eula called "the most gorgeous neck in the world." She was also a member of writer Truman Capote's elite colony of society "swans." Comparing Agnelli to that other rare bird, Babe Paley, he said with characteristic tartness, "If they were both in Tiffany's window, Marella would be more expensive."

Tall and lithe, with classical features, Agnelli was one of the BP's (beautiful people) often found in Diana Vreeland's aristo-chic Vogue. Admitted to the International Best Dressed List in 1963, she eventually became a Hall of Fame member.

Mr. Italia

Gianni Agnelli, was an Italian industrialist and principal shareholder of Fiat. As a public figure, Agnelli was also known worldwide for his impeccable, slightly eccentric fashion sense. He was named after his grandfather Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat.

In1953 he married Donna Marella Caracciolo dei principi di Castagneto — a half-American, half-Neapolitan noblewoman. Despite marriage, Agnelli was a noted playboy who kept many mistresses.

Agnelli’s dress style was a combination of classic suits, combined with eye-catching personal tricks. His suits were bespoke Caraceni, which were of very high quality and classic design. But it was the accessories and the way they were worn that made Agnelli stand out as a fashionisto. He was known for wearing his wristwatch over his cuff, wearing his tie askew or wearing high brown hiking boots under a bespoke suit. All these tricks were carefully chosen in order to convey sprezzatura, the Italian art of making the difficult look easy.

The Queen of Paris

“Jacqueline is the Last Queen of Paris,” said Valentino. Comtesse Jacqueline de Ribes grew up in an atmosphere of French aristocratic wealth and elegance. She was born 1931 in Paris as Jacqueline Bonnin de La Bonninière de Beaumont. Her parents were Jean de Beaumont, Comte Bonnin de la Bonninière de Beaumont, and his wife Paule de Rivaud de La Raffinière. In 1948, she married Edouard, Vicomte de Ribes, a rich and successful banker, who subsequently became Comte de Ribes.

“They say I am the last survivor of the Beistegui ball — it sounds like surviving the Titanic,” said the countess, referring to one of the grandest social events of the 20th century: the masked oriental ball thrown in 1951 in Venice by Mexican/French heir Carlos de Beistegui, with the clotted cream of international society from the Duchess of Windsor to the Aga Khan.

The Comtesse is considered one of the most elegant women in France, and in 1983 was voted the "Most Stylish Woman in the World" by the magazine Town and Country. In 1999 Jean-Paul Gaultier, the French designer, dedicated his collection to Jacqueline as the quintessence of Parisian elegance.

Flying Markham

Beryl Markham was a British-born Kenyan aviatrix, adventurer, and racehorse trainer. During the pioneer days of aviation, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. She is the author of the memoir West with the Night.

When Beryl was four years old, her father moved the family to Kenya, which was then British East Africa, purchasing a farm in Njoro near the Great Rift Valley. She spent an adventurous childhood learning, playing and hunting with the natives.

Beryl is not as well know as Danish writer Karen Blixen, whom Beryl befriended during the years that Blixen was managing her family's coffee farm in the Ngong hills outside Nairobi. When Blixen's romantic connection with the hunter and pilot Denys Finch Hatton was winding down, Markham started an affair with him herself.

Largely inspired by the British pilot Tom Campbell Black, with whom she had a long-term affair, she took up flying. She worked for some time as a bush pilot. She also mingled with the notorious Happy Valley set, but was never a full-fledged "member" of that decadent crowd.

The Mad Marchesa

For the first three decades of the twentieth century, the fabled Marchesa Luisa Casati triumphed as the brightest star in European society. The early deaths of her parents made Luisa and her elder sister, Francesca, the wealthiest heiresses in Italy at the time. Under the care of a guardian uncle, Luisa became engaged to and married the Marchese Camillo Casati, a young Milanese nobleman, in 1900.

She was tall and thin. A thick blaze of flame-coloured hair crowned her pale, almost cadaverously white face with its sensually vermilioned lips. Above all, however, the Marchesa’s large green eyes cast the strongest spell of her unique beauty. She exaggerated these further still with immense false lashes and surrounding rings of black kohl.

A celebrity and femme fatale, the marchesa's famous eccentricities dominated and delighted European society for nearly three decades. She captivated artists and literati figures such as Robert de Montesquiou, Erté, Jean Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, and Augustus John. She had a long term affair with the author Gabriele D'Annunzio.

John Galliano based the 1998 Spring/Summer Christian Dior collection on her. She is the namesake of the Marchesa fashion house. And Karl Lagerfeld debuted his 2010 Cruise-wear collection fittingly on the Lido in Venice, for which Casati was once again a major muse. As the concept of dandy was expanded in the 20th century to include women, the Marchesa Casati fitted the utmost female example by saying: "I want to be a living work of art".

Art and Peggy in Venice

Peggy Guggenheim was known for her heroic dedication to modern art, her somewhat wacky fashion sense, and her museum in Venice. She met and befriended many of the artists that she collected, including Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí, Fernand Léger, and Max Ernst, who become her second husband. Her gallery in New York showed young American artists such as Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Mark Rothko, David Hare, Janet Sobel, Robert de Niro Sr, Clyfford Still, and Jackson Pollock, the ‘star’ of the gallery, who was given his first show by Peggy late in 1943.

In 1947 Peggy decided to return in Europe, and soon after bought Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice, where she lived until her death. In 1962 Peggy Guggenheim was nominated Honorary Citizen of Venice.

In 1969, Peggy decided to donate her house and art collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation in New York, which had been created by her uncle Solomon. The Guggenheim Foundation converted and expanded Peggy Guggenheim's private house into one of the finest small museums of modern art in the world.

The Perfect Mrs. Paley

"Babe Paley had only one flaw: she was perfect. Other than that, she was perfect", said Truman Capote about the woman he adored for almost 25 years.

Born Barbara Cushing, Babe as she was known to friends and admirers, was the daughter of Harvey Cushing, both a renowned neurosurgeon and Pulitzer Prize winning author. Though not of society, from an early age her mother encouraged and groomed her 3 daughters to marry wealthy men. Babe’s sister, Betsey, was married to James Roosevelt, FDR's son, and later married Jock Whitney. Their oldest sister Minnie married Vincent Astor. Babe's first husband was Stanley Mortimer, of the Standard Oil family. After a brief marriage and subsequent divorce, she married William S. Paley, chairman of CBS. Though his family background and religion, he was Jewish, made him less of a social catch than her first husband, Mr. Paley embodied all of the qualities Babe found wonderful in a man: he was rich and powerful, and worshipped her absolutely.

For most of the 50s, 60s and 70s, Babe remained a fixture at the top of the Best Dressed List. A photograph of Babe with a scarf tied to her handbag, for example, created a trendy tidal wave that millions of women emulated. She often mixed extravagant jewelry with cheap costume pieces, and embraced letting her hair go gray instead of camouflaging it with dye. In a stroke of modernism, she made pantsuits chic. Her good friend Slim Keith referred to her style as "perfection in an era of casual convenience". Vogue called it "effortless chic achieved at great effort"

The Perfect Guest

C. Z. Guest was one of the monarchs of New York society, who was a perennial selection on the best-dressed list, a noted horsewoman and an authority on gardening. As a young girl her name was Lucy, but she soon became C. Z. when her brother, Alexander, could not pronounce ''sister.''

When she was married in 1947 to Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, an international polo star, heir to the Phipps steel fortune and a second cousin of Winston Churchill, the ceremony was held at the home of Ernest Hemingway in Cuba, with Hemingway serving as best man.

With her pale skin, blue eyes, ash-blond hair and trim figure, C. Z. was cut from the same cool, silky cloth as Grace Kelly. She had a patrician beauty that is indigenous to socially registered enclaves like Palm Beach and Southampton, a sporty, outdoorsy look that eschews makeup, hair spray and anything trendy.

Her motto was "The most important thing is to enjoy yourself and have a good time."

Belle of the Ball

Marie-Helene, Baroness de Rothschild, whose husband, Baron Guy de Rothschild, is dean of the French branch of the banking family, was well known in the world of fashion and was particularly renowned for the dinners, balls and benefits she organized. Many were held at Chateau Ferrieres, the former Rothschild mansion that now belongs to the French state. Her greatest triumph was the Proust Ball in December 1971, in celebration of the centenary of the reclusive author's birth. It was the most talked about party of that era. The guests came in costume and were photographed by Cecil Beaton. After Ferrieres was donated to the Government, the Baroness did most of her entertaining at her Paris residence, the 18th-century Hotel Lambert on Ile St.-Louis, where it was built by the court architect Louis Le Vau in 1642. The Rothschilds lived in a manner dubbed the "Rothschild style" - a mixture of Napoleon III, objects d'art, comfort and luxury. The Baron described his wife as having "a fabulous appetite for life, emotions always at their height, a spontaneity with a thousand facets, as ever-changing as the sea. And charm, which defies description."

Slim is a Lady

Slim Keith was a socialite and fashion icon during the 1950s and 1960s. She is perhaps best known, along with her friend Babe Paley, as the thinly veiled inspiration for the characters in Truman Capote’s novel, Answered Prayers.

Slim launched the career of a young Lauren Bacall when she spotted Lauren on the cover of Bazaar, and suggested her for a part in To Have and Have Not, with Humphrey Bogart, directed by her then husband Howard Hawks. Her second husband was the theatrical producer, Leland Hayward. They were such a popular couple in the 1950’s, and she such a fashion icon, that they rated a mention in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. When Grace Kelly’s character in the film mentions meeting the couple for cocktails, Jimmy Stewart asks, “Now tell me, what was Mrs. Hayward wearing?”

Her final marriage was to Sir Kenneth Keith, Baron of Castleacre. Slim had become Lady Keith. "God blessed me with a happy spirit and many other gifts. What I was not blessed with I went out and got. Sometimes the price was too high, but I've never been much of a bargain hunter."

Beautiful and Damned

Talitha Dina Pol Getty was born in Java, and was the second wife of John Paul Getty, of the oil Getty's. She married Getty in a white mini-skirt, trimmed with mink. The Getty's became part of "Swinging" London's fashionable scene. John Paul Getty was described as "a swinging playboy who drove fast cars, drank heavily, experimented with drugs and squired raunchy starlets."

Talitha Getty is probably best remembered for an iconic photograph taken on a roof-top in Marrakesh, Morocco in January 1969 by Lord Patrick Lichfield. Talitha's stylish look seemed to typify the hippie fashion of the time and became a model over the years for what, more recently, has been referred to variously as "hippie chic", "boho-chic" and even "Talitha Getty chic". Although, in her lifetime, Talitha Getty, who was only thirty when she died, was not much known to a wider public, fashion gurus of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have often written of her and Marrakesh (a major destination for hippies in the late 1960s, as illustrated by the song, Marrakesh Express by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as virtually synonymous.

Talitha Getty died of a heroin overdose in Rome, Italy on July 14, 1971. She died within the same twelve month period as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Edie Sedgwick and Jim Morrison, other cultural icons of the 1960s.