Luis Fernando Romo
Updated Saturday, February 24, 2024-01:37
"She is a rock crystal goddess with aquamarine eyes," Cecil Beaton
once commented
about his close friend
Mona von Bismarck.
In the early 1930s, the
socialite
began
building her own brand.
Her third wedding to
Harrison Williams
(1926-1953), then considered
the richest man
in the US with a fortune of
680 million
, gave her a dream universe that she perpetuated in the pages of American
Vogue
.
From that time on, to represent the epitome of everything that
taste and luxury
could make flourish - as Beaton said of the socialite - you had to surround yourself with a team of professionals who (re)created, reinforced and disseminated the
constructed image. artificially
of this character born into a family with possibilities.
His grandfather was the manager
of Fairlane Farms, which gave rise to Calumet, the thoroughbred
horse breeding
farm that has won so many trophies in the prestigious Kentucky Derby, and his father worked as a
trainer and breeder of stallions
at Churchill Downs, where celebrates the aforementioned championship.
To know more
'Celebs'.
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Among those professionals called cultural intermediaries, in addition to Cecil Beaton, a group of designers led by
Chanel, Vionnet and Lanvin
stood out , who chose her in 1933 as the first
best-dressed American in the world,
a label that remained indelible in the successive decades.
Cecil Beaton put her on the cover of American
Vogue
and through its pages in successive years she gave new meaning to the word
glamour
, which had among its main features sophistication, style, power of attraction and
influence
.
When Eleanor Lambert
came across it,
it was a piece of cake.
As creator of the International Best Dressed List, as well as promoter of New York Fashion Week and the Met Gala, Lambert chose Mona to top her first list in 1940. The socialite appeared on it
eight more times.
150 designs in a single season
Balenciaga
provided him with the necessary packaging to be an
icon of the 20th century
.
On one occasion, when he lost his voluminous luggage in a train accident, he commissioned the
Basque
couturier to create
150 haute couture designs
in a single season.
When the Basque master closed his
maison
in 1968 because, according to him, the end of an era had come, Mona
spent three days in mourning
without leaving her rooms in her villa in
Capri
.
A residence that contributed to
reinforcing its mythical aura
because it sits on the ancient domains of the emperors Caesar Augustus and Tiberius.
Finally the socialite found solace in
Hubert de Givenchy,
maker of Audrey Hepburn.
Her great friend Edna W. Chase, who had been the first editor of
Vogue
from 1914 to 1952, already made it clear: "Fashion can be bought;
style must be had."
Luis Ortiz and Gunilla von Bismarck, a distant relative of Mona.GTRES
In this extension of restful beauty,
Cartier, Belperron and Verdura
created exclusive pieces for her.
The best known was the Cartier
platinum and diamond necklace
from which hangs the 98.57-carat cushion-cut Bismarck sapphire donated in 1967 to the Smithsonian, the institution that treasures
Marie Antoinette's diamond earrings
that the grain heiress gave Marjorie Merriweather, or the Hope, the 45.5-carat cursed blue diamond bequeathed by jeweler to the stars Harry Winston.
Create trends
Mona knew how to measure her times very well.
She appeared in specific places,
with chosen people and at susceptible moments to generate news because, after all,
she wanted to create trends.
To continue the process of manufacturing her fame, Countess Von Bismarck was
impregnated with the arts
in saecula saeculorum
because
Salvador Dalí eternalized her
in
The Portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams
(1943).
It is said that when painting her
naked
, her millionaire became so angry that to please her the Catalan artist used her irony to dress her with some black brush strokes in the shape of rags.
The painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in 2013 for almost £2.3 million.
Her friend
Cole Porter immortalized her
in the Broadway musical
Red, Hot and Blue
(1936) in which Ethel Merman sang
What do I care if Mrs. Harrison Williams is the best dressed woman in town?
from the song
Ridin' High.
And
Truman Capote
created her alter ego Kate McCloud to dissect the lives of American
It girls
in
Prayers Attended,
the work with which he betrayed her swan.
Given
her string of marriages,
it is not surprising that the American author put in the character's mouth that "a good romp is equivalent to going around the world, and in more ways than one."
If celebrity is a value in itself and is considered a form of capital, Mona's main assets were
her wealth
and her ability to create trends.
Her
exclusive residences
scattered throughout New York, Palm Beach, Long Island, Paris and Capri were a
must
.
Inside some of them hung
works by Goya, Tiepolo and Fragonard
and he commissioned decorators of the stature of the British
Syrie Maugham
- wife of W. Somerset Maugham, author of
The Razor's Edge
- and the Catalan
Josep Maria Sert
, author of the Rockefeller Center murals and some of
Diaghilev
's ballets .
At her evenings it was normal to meet
Gore Vidal,
the Duke and Duchess of Windsor,
Diana Vreeland
or Elsie de Wolfe.
That girl destined to star in a new version of Cinderella
invested very well in husbands.
From the first,
Henry J. Schlesinger
(1917-1920), took $500,000 after the divorce in exchange for giving him
custody of her only son
because, like what Babe Paley thought, children got in the way of social advancement. .
In the 60s both became Capote's two most stylish swans.
In that impetus to be the best, Mona remarried the considered
most attractive man
in the United States,
James Irving Bush
(1921-1925) and with the fourth
Edward Albrecht von Bismarck
(1955-1970), she appropriated his noble title and his connections in the best European aristocratic salons.
What he left as an inheritance
With him she lived in one of the apartments of the
Lambert Hotel,
the aristocratic residence of the wealthiest classes, among whom were
the Marquise de Chatêlet,
in whose bedroom she frolicked with her lover
Voltaire
, or the Baron de Redé, who, like Capote, offered one of the
best dances of the last century,
Le Bal Oriental of 1969.
Her last husband was Bismarck's doctor, an Italian named
Umberto de Martini
(1971-1979) for whom she purchased the title of count from King Umberto II of Italy.
He was the only man much younger than her and
died in a car accident
that high society gossips named "Martini on the Rocks", a nod to the famous cocktail.
The Italian came out badly, since she, like Bismarck,
took advantage of her money,
especially when she stole from him to support his other family made up of
his real wife and his children.
The aristocrat
died at the age of 86
in 1983, leaving a fortune of
$25 million
that went to the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture Foundation in Paris.
She only left her only son
a million.
Carmen Cervera and Lex Barker, after marrying in March 1965.Getty
HER TIES WITH TITA THYSSEN, GUNILLA...
Like dozens of great American fortunes that emerged from the Gilded Age, Mona also traveled to Europe to connect with an illustrious family, the Bismarcks.
Her fourth husband was Edward Albrecht von Bismarck, grandson of the German chancellor Otto von Bismark and therefore cousin of Gunilla von Bismarck, the "queen of Marbella".
She is she is the great-granddaughter of the creator of modern Germany.
While Mona and Edward were married, they spent long periods in Paris where they lived at the Lambert Hotel and another urban mansion in the opulent 16th arrondissement overlooking the Seine and the Eiffel Tower.
In addition, they spent summers at the socialite's 18th-century villa on Capri, where Winston Churchill and Jackie Kennedy were regular visitors.
Tangentially, Mona is also linked to Tita Cervera.
The first husband of the Catalan and current Baroness Thyssen was the cinematic Tarzan Lex Barker, whose sister, Frederica Amelia, married Robert H. Schlesinger.
This was the only son of Mona von Bismark.
She was born as a result of her first marriage to millionaire Henry Schlesinger.
This heir liked women and show business so much that in addition to marrying five times, he had a romantic relationship with actress Linda Christian, ex-wife of Tyrone Power and mother of Romina.
Mona's son died in 2002 in Florida.
He never had a fluid relationship with his mother.