She had the elegance of the damned. — Diana Vreeland
(image via National Portrait Gallery)
The Honorable Daisy Fellowes’s list of titles is long, odd and (as was very Daisy) extremely glamorous — heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune, a twice-duchess and mother of princes, editor of Paris Harper’s Bazaar, acclaimed poet and novelist, one of the first-ever “It Girls” to grace the cover of Vogue and a noted patron of Elsa Schiaparelli and Dalí himself. A lot to accomplish in 72 years.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Daisy divided her time between New York, London and Paris, where her salon-like gatherings of artists and bon vivantes became the stuff of legend. Karl Lagerfeld himself deemed her “the chicest woman I ever laid eyes on,” and her quick wit (an article in The New York Times remembered her as “a Molotov cocktail in a Mainbocher suit”) intimidated both men and women.
But her acid-tongue reputation belied her generosity. Yes, rumors swirled of her associations with the notorious Wallis Simpson and her flirting with a young Winston Churchill — but after her death, records revealed that as editor of Harper’s, Daisy donated the entirety of her salary, and a good chunk of her fortune, to a local orphanage.
Add to your library list:
Sundays: A Fantasy (Daisy Fellowes)
Cats in the Isle of Man (Daisy Fellowes)
The Power of Style: The Women Who Defined the Art of Living Well (Annette Tappert and Diana Edkins)
Read more:
Style icon: Daisy Fellowes (Harper’s Bazaar)
The “It” Girls of Every Decade (Vanity Fair)
Jewelry that gleams with wicked memories (The New York Times)
She lived on grouse, cocaine and other women’s husbands (The Daily Mail)
Vogue’s earliest celebrity models (The Financial Times)
The icon: Cartier’s Tutti Frutti (The New York Times)
See more:
Daisy Fellowes (National Portrait Gallery)
Hear more:
Dress: Fancy (Balls & Baubles Podcast)
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