Her Serene Highness Princess Ira von Fürstenberg was a great European beauty. Diana Vreeland embraced the now 78-year-old as ‘one of the beautiful people’ and Salvador Dalí was desperate to paint her nude, though her husband forbade it. Now a new biography captures her extraordinary life and address book.
‘Ira is the epitome of that much misused word “gorgeous,”’ says her friend Nicky Haslam. ‘She had luscious, rosy colouring and a tawny blonde aura and has lived a life that has veered between aristo, jetset and showbiz worlds.’
The Fiat heiress was born in 1940 in Rome to sophisticated Austro-Hungarian émigrés and raised at Villa Fürstenberg in Venice, before being sent to boarding school in London to escape the scandal of her mother running off with an Italian count. At Cygnet House, she was taught to curtsey and step gracefully out of cars, and emerged as a Society swan, photographed by Cecil Beaton on her 15th birthday.
Indeed all the world’s cameras turned on her when, still 15, she wed a man 15 years her senior, Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Paris Match ran a prenuptial photoshoot and Life put Princess Ira on its cover, with the exuberant claim: ‘The wedding of the year’.
They were divorced by the time she was 20. ‘Since that very young marriage she has always shown great dignity,’ says Haslam. ‘She is a true if haphazard friend. Christmas cards are often months late, but invitations to her parties in exotic locations arrive out of the blue and on time. And not even the eruption of an Icelandic volcano could disrupt the elegant planning and originality of them.’
The Princess has remarkable connections; she’s dined with Reagan, danced with Frank Sinatra and befriended everyone from Princess Margaret to Prince Rainier of Monaco. When, in 1987, rumours swirled that Ira and Rainier were to marry, Princess Margaret said rudely: ‘Such a big girl for such a small country.’
For a time, one of Princess Ira’s closest friends was the late Karl Lagerfeld, whom she met in the Seventies when he was on the cusp of super-stardom. She introduced him to both financial backers and high society. ‘We met in Paris when he was working for Chloé,’ Princess Ira tells Tatler. ‘Life with Karl went very quickly.’ Lagerfeld would stay for a weekend at her Swiss villa on Lake Geneva and, in turn, she would spend Christmas with him in Paris. They’d travel to New York together and whenever she dropped by Chanel on Rue Cambon, Lagerfeld would bestow gifts upon his exceptional friend – which, of course, ‘I loved. I never helped with his designs but, sometimes I gave him ideas. There might have been a bracelet or bag I had that he admired and copied later.’
Princess Ira – in her time a film star, jewellery designer, Valentino’s PR and an artist – felt a kinship with Lagerfeld. ‘We both loved beautiful things,’ she says, ‘And I liked how sharp he was. He was witty, very outspoken and direct – and he noticed everything. He had a strong character, always dressed the best in a Chanel jacket and was always on the go. I miss him a lot and for a while we had a wonderful time.’
Ira: The Life and Times of a Princess by Nicholas Foulkes (£50, HarperCollins) is out 17 June
