Style Incorporated: Pauline de Rothschild

Fashion Plates

“She wanted to leave the house dressed like Caroline Lamb going to meet Byron,” said Mitchell Owens, a chronicler of Pauline Fairfax Potter, later the Baroness Phillippe de Rothschild, at a lecture at the New York School of Interior Design.

“And with that long queue de cheval yanked to the right, with the density of a bell pull,” he adds, referring to the hairstyle she invented for herself at 60, when she began to dress like Greta Garbo in Queen Christina, one of her fave-rave heroines.

She is remembered for her sense of decor—at her small apartment at the legendary Albany in London, her Paris flat, and at the Rothschild estate, Mouton, in Bordeaux.

Socialite Deeda Blair recalls Pauline at the opening of a Balanciaga couture show. "There down the row was Pauline de Rothschild, dressed in a Shaker-style skirt of volumes of fabric, a blouse, and that Balenciaga cotton square draped at her neck. It was fascinating to see Pauline catching glimpses of Greta Garbo, by whom she was fascinated, watching the show. Every time Garbo saw one of the outscaled cocktail hats of tulle, lace, or feathers on a model walk by, she leaned back into her chair and roared with laughter. But in the fitting rooms, standing there in her trousers, white shirt, and flat shoes, Garbo was trying on the hats.”

“At the end of her life, when she was very ill, she had a low Asian wicker basket, nothing expensive or grand, that she kept under a table in her bedroom.” says Owens of Pauline. Her uniform had been edited down to several pairs of matador-style britches—she had them copied over and over at a tailor in Ischia—her poet’s shirts, and all of this was neatly folded in this little box in the corner of her bedroom. Perfectly arranged on the top of the pile of britches, and the shirts, were her perfect pearls.”

—André Leon Talley

Pauline de Rothschild in a photo taken by Horst P. Horst for Vogue in 1988.

Pauline de Rothschild peering into her Paris bedroom, for a Horst P. Horst photo for Vogue in 1969.

Killer Instinct

Bouleversee Over Pamela!

I'm currently engrossed in reading the archived blogs on the subject of Pamela Harriman at the blog, "Shelley's House." An Oklahoman transplanted to England, Shelley's world is one of keen observations. In her "Pamela Blogs" as I call them, she has provided some hilarious as well as cringe-making anecdotes in the life of this amazing woman.

Pamela Harriman cut a metaphorically bloody swath through first London and then international society in her quest to rise up the ladder of fame and fortune. She felt no compunction to use whatever means at her disposal--her wit, her beauty, her body, her lack of conscience to enchant the richest, most prominent and often very married figures of her day. How did she do it? Shelley offers her take on it! And if you get really into Madame Pam and entangled in her machinations, who don't you take a break from real life and read Christopher Ogden's unauthorized biography, "Life of the Party: A Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward, Harriman."

More on "Killer Instinct" in a later post.

Until soon,

Amanda