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.

Ski High Altitude Society

Gstaad, in Switzerland, is perhaps more famous for its international high society than for it’s skiing. It’s located in the German-speaking section of the Canton of Berne in the southwestern part of the country. Valentino has a house there, as did the Buckley’s. King Juan Carlos of Spain famously broke his pelvis there. He broke it skiing.

Cortina, or more precisely Cortina d'Ampezzo, nestled in the Dolomites in the Italian Alps, is another famous ski destination known for its après-ski scene. The town hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics and was used in a scene from the James Bond picture, For Your Eyes Only.

St. Moritz, in Switzerland, is arguably more famous, if a bit more common. One of the oldest ski resorts in Europe, it hosted the Winter Olympics in both 1928 and 1948. It is also home to the Cartier Polo World Cup on Snow; an annual high-goal tournament featuring many of the world's finest teams. The tournament lasts four days and is played on a specially marked field located on a frozen lake.

Megève, in France, started its development as a ski resort in the 1910s when the Rothschild family started to spend their winter vacations there after becoming disenchanted with St. Moritz. In 1921, Baronne Noémie de Rothschild opened a hotel which boosted the resort's development. By the 1950s Megève was one of the most popular ski resorts in Europe, and was featured in the opening scenes of Charade with Audrey Hepburn, where her character meets Cary Grant.

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.

Back to School - Most Stylish Films

The American Films -

Laura, with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews

The Thomas Crown Affair, with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway

Bonnie and Clyde, with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty

The Hunger, with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie

American Gigolo, with Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman

Charade, with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant

Arabesque, with Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck

Mahogany, with Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams

The Eyes of Laura Mars, with Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones

Shanghai Express, with Marlene Deitrich and Anna May Wong

The Foreign Films -

Breathless, with Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seburg

Purple Noon, with Alain Delon

La Dolce Vita, with Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, and Anouk Aimee

8 ½, with Marcello Mastroianni

The Leopard, with Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, and Alain Delon

In The Mood For Love, with Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chui Wai

A Death in Venice, with Dirk Bogarde

Blowup, with David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave

Belle du Jour, with Catherine Deneuve

Last Year at Marienbad

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.

"More shoes, but you're already bought be dozens."

Arabesque is a 1966 thriller starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. The movie is based on Gordon Cotler's novel The Cypher and directed by Stanley Donen, who also directed Charade, Indiscreet, and Funny Face.

The plot, involving an evil Arab industrialist, and assassination attempt, and Loren as an Arab double agent and Peck as a bumbling Oxford professor, is not important. What stands out in this movie is Loren’s Marc Bohan designed Christian Dior wardrobe and a pivotal scene in her dressing room with dozen’s of pairs of Roger Vivier shoes. Vivier also designed the shoes for Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour.

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.

Venezia, Visconti, and Karl

Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel, is the very definition of sumptuous: the costumes and sets, the special geography of Venice, and the breathtaking cinematography combine to form a heady experience. At the center of this gorgeousness is Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde in a meticulous performance), a controlled intellectual who unexpectedly finds himself obsessed by the vision of Tadzio, a 14-year-old boy, while on a convalescent vacation in 1911. Karl Lagerfeld showed his 2010 Chanel Cruise collection in Venice, at the same beach setting as the film. The collection included a few men’s looks borrowed straight from Tadzio’s wardrobe, and shown on Karl’s own obsessions, Brad Kroenig and Baptiste Giabiconi.

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.

I Am Belle de Jour

In Luis Buñuel’s1967 Belle de Jour, Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, a beautiful young women married to a doctor. She loves her husband, but cannot bring herself to be physically intimate with him, his caresses failing to satisfy her psychic need for brutal degradation. She indulges instead in vivid, kinky, erotic fantasies to entertain her sexual desires. Eventually she becomes a prostitute, working in a brothel in the afternoons from two to five, the mystery of her matinée schedule causing her to be christened Belle de jour.

Deneuve’s wardrobe for the movie was designed by then 29 year old Yves Saint-Laurent. He and Deneuve developed a lifelong friendship on the set of the film, the designer calling her his “muse.”

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."

Your Credit is No Good Here

The Hotel du Cap Eden Roc, Cap d’Antibes sits on a hill commanding 22 acres of gardens and woodland, between Nice and Cannes. From the 19th-century château, a broad carriage walk rolls down to Eden Roc, surely the most exclusive beach club on the Côte d’Azur. There is, however, nothing so vulgar as a beach (the pool above photographed by Slim Aarons). F Scott Fitzgerald immortalised it as the Hôtel des Etrangers in Tender Is the Night. Since it's opening in 1889, the hotel has only accepted cash as payment, although recently it has accepted credit cards.

The 5th Earl

Patrick Lichfield, the photographer of the image of Talitha Getty, from an earlier post, was actually Thomas Patrick John Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield. He was related to the Queen of England, and with access to the royal family, became one of the best known British photographers. He took the wedding photos of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, as well as the Golden Jubilee photos of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. The above photo by Slim Aarons from 1968, shows Lord Lichfield on the Italian Riviera flanked by Pucci-clad Italian princesses.

You can never be too Slim

Slim Aarons made his name photographing the international elite in their exclusive playgrounds during the jet-set decades of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, carrying out his self-described mission: to document "attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places." Slim started his career in the army as a photographer during WWII. His long out of print book, A Wonderful Time, can fetch well over $1000 per copy, if you can find one for sale. One of his most iconic photos, shown above, is the 1955 shot of fashion icon and socialite C.Z. (Mrs. Winston) Guest poolside with her son in Palm Beach.

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.

All the fringe benefits

Everyone knows about Givenchy and Breakfast at Tiffany's. But for real style, watch Patricia Neal and her Pauline Trigère wardrobe. Trigère was the French born American designer popular in the '50s, '60, and '70s. ''Fashion is what people tell you to wear,'' she often said. ''Style is what comes from your own inner thing.'' Of course the most stylish thing Patricia does in the movie, is write her "boy" a check for $1000 to take a girl on vacation. "I am a very stylish girl."

Gloria's Greatest Hits

With her swanlike neck and clever sense of humor, Gloria Guinness effortlessly reigned over the jetset in the Sixties and Seventies. Born to modest means in Mexico, she rose to the top of the social heap after wedding banking heir Loel Guinness. They maintained homes in London, Normandy, Paris, Lausanne, Acapulco and Palm Beach. Since the Guinnesses keep moving from one house to another through the year, they found that packing and unpacking could become quite a chore. Loel Guinness hated luggage, so the two kept complete wardrobes at the ready in each of their homes. Thus they needed to travel with nothing more than the clothing on their backs. "You don't have to waste time in customs, and you don't have to declare anything. It's wonderful!" They also traveled with two chefs, kitchen maid, personal maid, valet and three chambermaids. Although she was the ultimate couture client, she didn't have a problem putting designers in their place. "My husband pays for the clothes; you just design them." But the best advise Gloria ever gave concerned jewelry. “I’ve never worn costume jewelry in my life. It’s really very self-defeating. Why should a man buy a woman real jewelry when she wears false pieces?” And Gloria's final wisdom? “Chic? It is absolutely innate, it cannot be taught.”

The VIPs

It all started with Elizabeth Taylor and the V.I.P.s. The V.I.P.s is a movie from 1963 starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and directed by Anthony Asquith. The movie is about a group of travelers waiting in the V.I.P lounge at a London airport for their fog grounded New York bound flight. The significant detail in this film is the custom mink rain coat that was made for Miss Taylor for the movie. In a famous antidote from the making of the movie, Liz kept giving away the custom coats to crew members on the set.