Well Said: Nancy Mitford

An 1824 portrait of architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Naples, Italy, by artist Franz-Ludwig Catel. The painting is in the collection of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany.

"I love the French window which marries a house to the firmament instead of dividing them like the stuffy sash."

So observed Nancy Mitford (1904—1973) in her 1961 essay "Portrait of a French Country House."

Well Said: Lily Bart

Manhattan debutante turned silent-movie actress Katherine Harris Barrymore (1891-1927). She portrayed Lily Bart in director Albert Capellani's 1918 film of "The House of Mirth."

"If only I could do over my aunt's drawing-room, I know I should be a better woman."

So said Lily Bart, tragic heroine of Edith Wharton's 1905 novel The House of Mirth.

Well Said: Elsa Schiaparelli

"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale."

So said Elsa Schiaparelli (1890—1973), fashion provocateur, inspired hostess, patron of the arts, and author of the engaging memoir Shocking Life.

 

Well Said: Hélène Rochas

An acrylic-and-silkscreen portrait of Hélène Rochas by Andy Warhol, 1974.

“I’m against the idea of dressing young—that shows fear."

So said Hélène Rochas (1927—2011), former fashion model, international beauty, and director of the Paris perfume house of the same name, following the 1955 death of her first husband, Marcel Rochas. Among the scents she inspired or commissioned were Femme de Rochas (a wedding gift from her husband in 1944), Madame Rochas (launched in 1960), Eau de Roche (aka Eau de Rochas), and Muse de Rochas.

Well Said: Coco Chanel

"It is as dreadful to be too rich as to be too tall. In the first instance you don't find happiness and in the second you can't find a bed."

So said couturière Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel (1883-1971), as quoted in The Allure of Chanel by Paul Morand (Pushkin Press, 2008).

Well Said: Daisy Fellowes

Daisy Fellowes in a 1930s photograph by Cecil Beaton.

"Either a thing is a disappointment or it is not."

So said Franco-American fashion icon and novelist Marguerite "Daisy" Fellowes (1890—1962), daughter of the 3rd Duc Decazes and Glücksberg, a granddaughter of Singer sewing-machine magnate Isaac Singer, muse to fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and mistress of many.

Well Said: Lesley Blanch

"The placing of a desk, or a bed, or the choice of a chintz may prove more revealing [of a person] than a documented study."

So observed British writer Lesley Blanch (1904-2007) in Pavilions of the Heart: The Four Walls of Love (Putnam, 1974).

Well Said: Coco Chanel

French couturière Coco Chanel pinning a sleeve in 1962.

"The opposite of luxury is not poverty because in the houses of the poor you can smell a good pot au feu. The opposite is not simplicity for there is beauty in the corn-stall and barn, often great simplicity in luxury, but there is nothing in vulgarity, its complete opposite."

So Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel (1883—1971) told photographer Cecil Beaton in 1966.

Well Said: Ghislaine de Polignac

Ghislaine, Princesse de Polignac, by Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Paris, 1957. Image from the artist's website.

"Men are simply not accustomed to suffer to be beautiful."

So said Princesse de Polignac (née Ghislaine Charlotte Claire Brinquant, 1918-2011): Continental society ornament; former wife of Prince Edmond de Polignac; public relations director for Revlon in France; fashion stylist for Galeries Lafayette; mistress of many, and by all colorful accounts, an all-around good-time girl. 

Well Said: Eugenia Huici de Errázuriz

Eugenia Huici de Errázuriz, circa 1940, from Mo Amelia Teitelbaum's "The Stylemakers: Minimalism and Classic Modernism, 1915—1945" (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2010)

"Everything has its place in life. Even objects guests don't normally see should reflect one's tastes and beliefs."

So said Eugenia Huici de Errázuriz (1860—1951), arguably the aesthete of all time, after a visitor to her house noticed a scarlet ribbon stylishly tied around the handle of a common household broom. A Bolivian-born mining heiress who sat for John Singer Sargent, inspired Jean-Michel Frank, supported Stravinsky, and collected Picasso, she left a lasting mark on interior design, choosing soulful minimalism over extravagant folderol.

Well Said: Gladys Duchess of Marlborough

Gladys Deacon, later Duchess of Marlborough, in a portrait by Paul-César Helleu.

"If you want to do something, don’t tell other people about it, just do it. Other people will always find a reason to try and prevent you."

So said Gladys Duchess of Marlborough (1881—1977), American heiress, intellectual, adventuress, and celebrated beauty.

SOURCE: Hugo Vickers, "An Eccentric Duchess," New York Social Diary, 23 February 2011.

Well Said: Gina Lollobrigida

 

"What is the use of being beautiful, if you have to buy your own emeralds?"

So said actress Gina Lollobrigida (born 1927), after being complimented by Moroccan diplomat Taibi Benhima at a dinner party in New York City in 1965.

SOURCE: Gladys Wilson, The Duchess Pini di San Miniato, Memoirs of a Canadian Duchess (Montréal: P.D.S.M. Editor, 1986), page 110.

Well Said: Pablo Picasso

Artist Pablo Picasso in his studio. Image from World Art.

"There are chemists who spend their whole lives trying to find out what's in a lump of sugar. I want to know one thing: What is color?"

So said Pablo Picasso (1881—1973), in a conversation with German writer Ernst Jünger in the 1940s.

SOURCE: Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here (Penguin, 1989), page 110

Well Said: Edmond Roudnitska

“A beautiful perfume is the one which gives us a shock: a sensory one followed by a psychological one."


So said Edmond Roudnitska (1905—1996), creator of memorable scents, notably several for Christian Dior, among them Diorama (1948), Diorissimo (1956), Eau Savage (1966), Diorella (1972), and Dior-Dior (1976).

In honor of Roudnitska, today I splashed on Moustache, the 1948 fragrance that he and his wife, Thérèse, created for Marcel Rochas. Though Moustache has been discontinued, supplies of a recalibrated version can be found online but nothing beats the long-ago real thing. As Bruce Everiss, writer of the blog Bruce on Shaving, explains, "If you are looking for Moustache then the new formulation is in a rectangular frosted glass bottle with a silver cap. The original is in a cylindrical fluted glass bottle." For an example of the latter, see the '60s advertisement below.

Word to the wise: Proctor & Gamble, owner of the Marcel Rochas marque, should bring back Moustache—the Roudnitskas' 1948 formula, please. And that distinctive bottle too.

Well Said: Patricia Highsmith

"Obsessions are the only things that matter."

So wrote noir novelist Patricia Highsmith (1921—1995), masterful writer of books that biographer Joan Schenkar has called "brilliantly disorienting narratives of ... shimmering negativity."

Well Said: Sir Nikolaus Pevsner

"A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture. Nearly everything that encloses space on a scale sufficient for a human being to move in is a building; the term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic appeal."


So wrote Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902—1983), the author, as Wikipedia states, of a "46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951-74), one of the great achievements of 20th century art scholarship."

To order the latest editions of these celebrated guides, click here. And to hear one of Pevsner's Reith radio lectures about English art, click here.

Originally posted on An Aesthete's Lament on 5 December 2008.

Well Said: Marie-Hélène de Rothschild

Baroness Guy de Rothschild (née Baroness Marie-Hélène Naïla Stéphanie Josina van Zuylen van Nyevelt) at a movie premiere in 1973, in the company of Salvador Dalí and Yul Brynner.

"Those who are small in spirit, who are mean, narrow-minded or timid, should leave entertaining to others."

So observed Marie-Hélène de Rothschild (1931-1996), the queen of Paris society.


Originally posted on An Aesthete's Lament on 8 November 2008.

Well Said: Mildred the Maid

"You got your dishes, you got your home."

So said actress Nancy Walker (1922—1992) in her role as the idiosyncratic maid, Mildred, in the first episode of the 1970s crime drama McMillan & Wife. In that particular segment, San Francisco Police Commissioner Stewart McMillan's wife, portrayed by Susan Saint James, nearly gets killed when a murder investigation intersects with her search for a missing Wedgwood china service she inherited from an aunt.

I understand Mildred's sentiment completely. When I lived in Spanish Harlem, in my youth, my ground-floor apartment was utterly bare, I mean mattress-on-the-floor bare. There was also a floor lamp and my dog. That was it. I did, however, possess a set of sterling silver flatware and some 1830s English plates, which made eating Chinese take-out while seated on the floor much more comforting.

Well Said: Filippa Rolf

Véra Nabokov and her novelist husband, Vladimir, in Switzerland, 1966.

“She is a fine decoration in an armchair.”

So poet Filippa Rolf observed of Véra Nabokov (1902 — 1991), wife of the novelist.

Remember: You are as much an ornament in your rooms as any bibelot. So comport yourself accordingly.

Well Said: John Dickinson

Designer John Dickinson at home in San Francisco, California, 1978. Image by Terry Schmidt for the San Francisco Chronicle.

"A room is finished when you cannot remove something without it being missed. Everything must earn its keep."

So said John Dickinson (1920—1982), American decorator and designer, who was known for furniture and interiors that were "spare, cerebral, uncompromising, and original." Such as carved-wood lamp bases shaped like femurs or a table of galvanized tin ingeniously worked to resemble draped fabric.