During the first two weeks of this month NYSD covered two major social/fund-raising events in Europe – the first was the Venetian Heritage Biennale in Venice and the second in France was staged by the American Friends of Versailles in Paris and at Versailles.
These events were created by Americans for Americans and for our European friends. Separately and together they raise millions for dollars to fund projects of restoration in their chosen areas. They also provide for their supporters the opportunity to learn about and partake in the great historical and cultural legacies of the last 1000 years of European civilization.
These projects also provide the opportunity for people to rendezvous with old friends and acquaintances and make new friendships. Various events have different sizes. Some of the tours and luncheons involved only 30 or 40. Others, such as the Venetian Heritage’s dinner at the Palazzo Pisani-Moretta on the Grand Canal, or at the Palazzo Albrizzi, or the Bal de Marie Antoinette at Versailles involved hundreds of people.
Many of these people know each other and many are newcomers. The Friends of Versailles especially, draws people from all over the United States. Although we’ve traveled among these groups before, and know a number of people from New York, there are many others we do not know, and have not met.
I thought it would be interesting, however, to tell you just a little about some of the personalities and individuals behind the names and faces.
 |
 |
Donna Diamante dalle Ore, Larry Lovett, and Betsy Lovett |
Donna Diamante dalle Ore, Larry Lovett and Betsy Lovett. Photographed at the Villa Coin outside Asolo. From left: Signora alle Ore is the owner of Villa Barbaro where she and her husband played hosts to the Venetian Heritage friends one Monday night. One of Palladio’s greatest villas, built in the mid-1500s, was purchased by Diamante’s grandfather Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata in 1934. From then on, the family, especially Diamante’s mother Marina embarked on restoration of the beautiful property. Although she has siblings, Diamante, as she is called, was most passionately interested in the preservation and maintaining of Villa Barbaro which sits on a knoll in the village of Mazer.
In the center of the photo is Larry Lovett, the chairman of Venetian Heritage and one of the major forces in bringing people together and raising funds. Mr. Lovett, an American who has lived much of his adult life in Europe, for years, up until recently, was the proud owner of a palazzo on the Grand Canal. He has long been actively involved in restoration not only in Venice but all over the world.
On the right: Betsy Lovett, widow of Larry’s brother. A very outgoing and gracious woman, Mrs. Lovett is a longtime resident of Jacksonville although she has lots of friends in New York, and has been involved in the restorations for many years also. While some of us are slow to warm to “new” people, Betsy Lovett is quick to warm and to spread that warmth.
 |
|
Helmut and Danna Swarovski with Don Miller |
Helmut and Danna Swarovski with Don Miller. Mr. Swarovski is the great-grandson of the founder of the Swarovski crystal business. His wife is a native Texan who has lived her adult life in Europe with her husband. The beautiful Mrs. Swarovski is quiet-spoken and direct in conversation. Her husband has much of her American friendliness although of course speaks English with a Germanic accent. One of their daughters, Nadja, who now lives in London, is well-known to New Yorkers for her interest in social and philanthropic activities. She made a great impact during her time in New York raising the glamour profile of the family business. D. Swarovski and Company, still a privately owned business does about $1.7 billion in annual sales, employing more than 13,000. That famous dress that Marilyn Monroe wore on the night of John F. Kennedy’s birthday at Madison Square
Garden (and which was later sold at auction for more than $1 million) was carrying 10,000 Swarovski crystals.
|
 |
Ondine de Rothschild, Gary Parr, and Ariane Dandois |
Ondine de Rothschild, Gary Parr and Ariane Dandois. Mlle. de Rothschild is the daughter of Mme. Dandois and Baron Elie de Rothschild. The baron, scion of the great banking family, who was always married, since the early 1940s, to an Austrian woman, Liliane Fould-Springer, was also famous in society for his mistresses, or vice versa. These included Pamela Digby Churchill, later Pamela Harriman and Francoise de Langlade, later Francoise de la Renta.
Mme. Dandois is also a famous Parisian antiquaire with a shop on the rue Faubourg Saint-Honore, almost directly across from the Elysee Palace where the President of France lives. She is a much discussed personality, known for her beauty, her shrewdness, her temperament which has ready access to hauteur of the most Parisienne kind, and now her beautiful daughter.
The young Mlle. de Rothschild came to the US to study at Princeton and it was then that she took her father’s name – not a common occurrence in France. The child, however, had absorbed some of that good ole American can-do. She’s been involved with her mother’s business for several years. They are frequently on the scene in New York, London, Paris, etc, almost always together and notable for their presence. The daughter is long (she must be six feet) and willowy and reminds me in looks and bearing of a combination of Princess Diana and the late Lady Sarah Churchill as a young woman. The mother is shorter than the daughter and while no longer willowy, she carries herself and dresses with an off-hand chic.
 |
|
The Countess de Ribes |
In this photograph they were with Gary Parr, a New Yorker who is an officer of Venetian Heritage, and a big supporter of restoration. Mr. Parr, a soft-spoken and friendly fellow, is a lawyer, considered quite brilliant, and a partner in Lazard (which once upon a time was a serious competitor of the Rothschild banks) in New York and maintains a home in Tuxedo Park.
The Countess de Ribes. Jacqueline de Ribes has dominated the annals of French fashion for the past five decades. It was a look that was all hers, both cool and elegant and grand. Like a French countess. Off camera, however, although as elegant and cool, she wears none of the grandness but is a rather friendly woman interested in the world about her. A charter member of 20th century international society, she’s frequently been on the scene in New York. The countess is one of the great Proustian-like characters of Paris society.
Kree (nickname for Karenna) Bakic --pictured here with Larry Lovett – is a California native who went to New York in her late teens to become a very successful Ford model. One of her bookings took her to Europe and to Germany where she met a young designer businessman named Dieter Bakic.
|
 |
Kree Bakic and Larry Lovett |
Today Dieter Bakic has one of the biggest design and packaging firms in the world with offices in Munich, Paris and New York. She married him and has remained in Europe, bringing up her family all of her adult life. Like Danna Swarovski, Kree Bakic has lost none of her American-ness although style-wise, I was reminded of the late Princess Grace who over time took on some of the distinctions of European haute style. We talked about California as if we’d both just been there a few days ago.
Patricia Patterson and Prince Michael of Greece. Mrs. Patterson is a longtime member and hostess on the Southampton/Palm Beach/New York social axis. She’s been a member of Venetian Heritage since its inception and a traveler to Venice at least once a year for the past twenty-five. In New York she maintains a full schedule of dinner and party-going, chairing benefit committees, weekends either in Locust Valley or Southampton (in the warmer weather) and is also a broker with Sotheby’s Realty for high end residential real estate.
Here she is talking to Prince Michael, the prolific historian of royalty and novelist. Prince Michael is directly related to almost every royalty family on the European continent including the Romanovs (his great-grandmother Olga was Empress of Russia). He is directly-related to both the Bourbons and the Orleans families of France as well as the Windsors in England, including Prince Philip. This particular royal, however, is firstly an historian. To read what he writes or hear what he has to say about all of his royal ancestors and their histories is to be fascinated. Prince Michael (or Michel as he is known to his friends) is married to the sculptress Marina Karella. They have two daughters, Princess Olga and Princess Alexandra, both of whom have old family names. Wanna guess which family?
 |
|
Pat Patterson and Prince Michael of Greece |
As an American in this somewhat rarefied European environment, you become aware of the idea of dynasty in a way that Americans have nothing to compare. We refer to the Kennedys or the Bushes or the Roosevelts or the Fords or Rockefellers, as dynasties. The Europeans, however, are profoundly involved with their heritage. It often begins at birth and is centered around a piece of property – such as the palazzos we visited, some of which belonged to the same family for a half a millennium. The property is the core of the family. At the beginning of the 21st century, many of these very “old” families now use that family property for income. There are many palaces and chateau throughout England and Europe which are “for rent” for special occasions. The rent, of course, is not for everyone and not just anyone. Palaces don’t come cheap, but they do confer a little extra something that money can’t buy.
Another aspect of the European social tradition is the matter of the “title,” another marker which reflects lineage, past, history, tradition, heritage to everybody. With few exceptions, the European titled ones that we meet are very relaxed and casual people who nevertheless take a certain pride in their titles – because it reflects family, a bond with history.
|
 |
Marina Karella (Princess Michael of Greece), Jean-Gabriel Mitterand, and Judy Taubman |
Marina Karella (Princess Michael of Greece), Jean-Gabriel Mitterand and Judy Taubman. Marina, as she is known, an heiress to a Greek shipping fortune, is a prominent sculptor and artist. She and her husband lived in New York when their children were school age where they were sought after members of both the social and the art set with far flung connections to Europe and royalty.
Despite the social connections, the inherited fortune and the European high life, Ms. Karella is almost totally focused on her work, as her husband is on his.
Parisian art dealer, Jean-Gabriel Mitterand. Mitterand’s father was an elder brother of the late French President Francois Mitterand.
Judy (Mrs. A. Alfred) Taubman. Mrs. Taubman, who lives in New York, Southampton and Palm Beach, is a frequent visitor to England and France where she and her husband have many friends. She’d arrived in Venice from London where the Taubmans have an apartment, and returned to London after the tour ended where she met her husband for a book party being given for him by some English earl or duke; after which they were traveling to Paris for yet another book party and weekends at friends’ chateau.
 |
|
Donald and Muffy Miller with Larry Lovett |
Donald and Muffy Miller (with Larry Lovett), photographed here by JH at Villa Barbaro. The Millers are a popular couple on the New York charity circuit. They have a home in Greenwich and in Palm Beach. Mr. Miller is an investor/ businessman. He’s a native Ohioan and a perfect example of how “you can take the boy out of Ohio, but you can’t take Ohio out of the ... boy.”
A graduate of Cornell and Harvard Business and well respected businessman in New York circles, he still retains the country boy’s ingenuousness in approach and manner. That is not to infer Mr. Miller is a hick or a hayseed. Cornell, Harvard Business? I don’t think so. But he retains that Midwestern grace and courtesy, not to mention shrewdness. His vivacious wife is the President of Venetian Heritage and by that very fact, something of an enthusiastic prominent executive herself. These safaris into European culture, with their highly active schedules can be a traffic director’s nighmare, not to mention the thousands of pieces of detail that go into organizing a people-moving endeavor. Mrs. Miller wears this responsibility with as much ease as she wears this emerald green ensemble. Furthermore it doesn’t end with the logistics or the receptions, concerts, tours and dinners. It ends with the finished product of the (a) restoration funded by Venetian Heritage.
|
 |
George Farias and Bettina Zilhka |
George Farias and Bettina Zilhka photographed at the Palazzo Pisani Moretta for the seated dinner of the Venetian Heritage honoring Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo.
Both Farias and Zilkha were in Venice for a combination of the Venice Biennale events and the Venetian Heritage main social events. Both move effortlessly in and out of the world of the arts and society.
George Farias is a Texas-born, Yale-educated New York investment advisor; single, lives on Park Avenue, travels extensively to Europe and spends his Augusts either in the South of France or (more recently) at the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles where he’s made something of a name for himself entertaining the grandest of the town’s dames including Mrs. Reagan. He is an exceptionally gracious and kind-spoken fellow who conducts himself impeccably and coolly at all times. Ms. Zilkha, younger daughter of the Iraqi-born international banker, Ezra Zilkha, is a very well known face and presence on the New York social scene. And like George Farias, she is likely to be seen at the most social of celebrations across the world. |
