Pauline Fairfax-Potter, Baroness de Rothschild

Pauline Fairfax-Potter, Baroness de Rothschild (born December 31, 1908 in Passy near Paris , † March 8, 1976 in Santa Barbara , California ) was an American fashion icon, designer , writer and grande dame .

Origin and childhood

Pauline was born at 10 rue Octave Feuillet in Passy, ​​a suburb of Paris. She was the daughter of Francis Hunter Potter, a playboy and grandson of the Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, Alonzo Potter . Her mother was Gwendolen Playford Cary, a great niece of the third President of the United States of America Thomas Jefferson and a great-granddaughter of the poet Francis Scott Key . Pauline grew up in New York , Paris, Biarritz and Baltimore due to the divorce of her parents and their later connections . She received her education in several private schools and by private teachers.

First marriage

In 1930, Pauline Potter married in Baltimore the art historian Charles Carroll Fulton reader (1900-1949), grandson of the publisher of The Baltimore Sun . Her husband was an alcoholic and had homosexual relationships. After moving to the Spanish island of Mallorca in 1934 , she separated from her husband. The divorce was pronounced in 1939 and she returned to her previous name.

Romances

After their divorce, she entered into numerous relationships, including with the Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak (1899-1972), the American film director and actor John Huston (1906-1987), the US diplomat Elim O'Shaughnessy , the French garden architect André Levesque de Vilmorin , the Russian Grand Duke Dmitri Pawlowitsch Romanow (1891–1942) and the theater producer Jed Harris (1900–1979). For several years she was also the lover of Isabelle Kemp , a married millionaire heiress living in New York.

Professional career

In the early 1930s, Pauline was working as a personal buyer in New York for high society . In 1934, she and her first husband opened several fashion stores on Mallorca. On the side Pauline also worked for the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) in London and Paris; through their creations she was often seen in the social columns. Together with her friend Louise Macy, the former editor of the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar , she opened the Macy-Potter fashion house in New York in the early 1940s . The company went bankrupt when Macy's lover, millionaire John Hay Whitney (1905–1982), stopped funding. Despite this fiasco, she opened a new fashion store selling the collections of the fashion designers Hattie Carnegie and Jean Louis . Her customers included the Duchess of Windsor , heiress Thelma Chrysler Foy, and actresses Gertrude Lawrence and Ina Claire . In 1944 she designed the costumes for John Huston's Broadway production of Sartre's Private Society . The dress she designed for actress Annabella can be seen today at the Museum of the City of New York .

Second marriage

In 1954 Pauline married the wine pioneer Baron Philippe de Rothschild (1902–1988) in Paris . The marriage remained childless. Together with her stepdaughter Philippine de Rothschild-Sereys (* 1935), she worked on the awareness of the wine company. Thanks to the creative energy and talent of Baroness Pauline de Rothschild, the Château Mouton-Rothschild changed - the baroness's exceptional taste, sense of culture, charm and host qualities carried over to the winery. In the early 1960s she wrote several articles for the fashion magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue . The Museum of Wine in Art , founded by Baroness Pauline and her cousin Diana Vreeland (1906–1989), editor of Vogue , in 1962 shows an impressive collection of tapestries, carafes, glasses and pictures related to wine as well as those of Pablo Picasso , Jean Cocteau and other labels created since 1945. The museum is now a tourist magnet .

Death and funeral

In the early 1970s, doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer , heart failure, and Marfan's syndrome . Pauline de Rothschild died of a heart attack on March 8, 1976 in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara, California. Her body was buried at Château Mouton-Rothschild, next to her husband.

Honors

• 1965 Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur

literature

• Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins: The Power of Style: The Women Who Defined the Art of Living Well. B&T Verlag, 1994, ISBN 0-517-58568-5

Web links

• The New York Times Magazine - Pauline On My Mind (English)
• Baroness Philippe de Rothschild, at Château Mouton on the occasion of her stepdaughter's wedding, 1961
• Pictures by Pauline Potter, Baroness de Rothschild, 1962