Baron de Redé - a man who led an eighteenth century life in the twenty-first century

Što religija luksuza može učiniti čovjeku.
Alexis Dieter Rudolf Oscar von Rosenberg odlučio je samoga sebi osuditi na život u luksuzu i pretrpjeti sve što slijedi kad si odrediš grcanje u stilu i eleganciji. Njegovi su memoari čista metafizika.


Alexis von Rosenberg, a.k.a. the Baron de Redé, moved to Paris shortly after the Second World War, encountered the luxury for which even his privileged childhood could not have prepared him and rarely strayed from its lap until his death in 2004. By that time he had completed his memoirs, edited by Hugo Vickers and issued the following year. From Vickers’ foreword:

His obituary, published in the Daily Telegraph on 10 July, 2004, brought to the attention of the world a man who led an eighteenth century life in the twenty-first century. Many who had never heard of him were fascinated by this extraordinary figure whose aspirations and ambitions were so aloof from the general fray of modern life. Through the writing of his memoirs, Alexis was nervous. ‘Will anyone be interested?’ he asked with customary modesty. ‘Hundreds of pages of nonsense?’ he wondered at a low moment.

At home with the Baron de Redé

By James Conway 

It’s been a bit morbid around here lately, hasn’t it? It’s just struck me how many fascinating people met their (often messy) deaths in November. If you’re bummed out by all this self-harm and tragedy it’s probably time we dropped in on the Baron de Redé.


Alexis Dieter Rudolf Oscar von Rosenberg was born in 1922 of Jewish parents, though he was raised Protestant; his father, a banker, had been ennobled in the twilight of the Habsburg Empire. The young Alexis grew up in Zurich’s Dolder Hotel, where the family initially had a suite of 16 rooms (one of which was reserved for his mother’s flower arranging) but as the father’s fortune shrank so too did their quarters until eventually they were living in just two rooms. Alexis was nonetheless sent to the exclusive Le Rosey school where a fellow student, the future Shah of Iran, admired Alexis’s feminine charm, “which might belong a little to a rose”.
When his father went bankrupt and killed himself in 1939 (sorry! There was a bit of tragedy after all), Redé was left with the taste but not the means for luxury, so it was a stroke of luck that in New York just two years later he met Arturo Lopez-Wilshaw. This Chilean businessman, one of a wave of fabulously wealthy South Americans who rose to social prominence in Paris in the early 20^th century, made his fortune from potassium-rich guano deposits. Lopez-Wilshaw was smitten with Redé, and frankly someone who could turn shit into gold was just the kind of man the baron needed to finance his lifestyle. The offer of $1 million to return to Europe with him sealed the deal, though Lopez-Wilshaw’s wife Patricia was understandably less than delighted by this arrangement. “My relationship with Arturo and Patricia was complicated,” observed Redé with commendable restraint.

The baron with the Duchess of Windsor

In 1946 Redé moved to Paris. Anyone who has deplaned miserably at Charles de Gaulle and crawled through traffic-choked streets to their hotel can only envy Redé’s entrée into the city. Accompanied by society decorator Elsie de Wolfe, he was picked up in a Rolls Royce belonging to British Ambassador Duff Cooper and taken to top restaurant Le Grand Vefour, there encountering, among others, Jean Cocteau, the saloniste Marie-Laure de Noailles and Count Etienne de Beaumont, the great entertainer whose parties had even coaxed Proust out of his cork-lined room back in the day (the Baron’s own social events would become the talk of Paris, but we will return another time to admire his magnificent balls).

Rolling with a crew like that, you know Redé’s crib isn’t going to be anything ordinary. Shortly after his arrival the Baron rented an apartment in central Paris’s finest private residence, the Hôtel Lambert, which dominates the eastern tip of the Ile Saint-Louis. It was built by Louis Le Vau, whose CV also included that humble shack Versailles, and one of the conditions of Redé’s relatively modest rent was that he must help restore the building.

Sublime ghosts crowded the Baroque salons; Mozart, Chopin and Liszt had all played there and Redé’s bedroom had once been Voltaire’s. For himself, Redé claimed “I am not a philosopher,” but he was being too modest. True, his  memoirs are short on metaphysical enquiry, but his pursuit of opulence and refinement was so rigorous as to in itself constitute a model for living. “I lead a self-imposed life of luxury,” he announced, “style, courtesy and elegance are my prime considerations”.

Lopez-Wilshaw died in 1962, leaving the baron half his fortune and in 1975, the baron’s great friends Marie-Hélène and Guy de Rothschild bought the Lambert and Redé could relax, knowing that his hyperaestheticised existence was secure. He continued decorating the house as long as he lived, and the 2005 auction of his estate included such museum-quality pieces as a solid silver chair, agate snuff boxes and porcelain services of such value and rarity that they could only be washed up in the presence of insurance company representatives. His personal effects, including an Hermès money clip, silver newspaper tongs, a Cartier cigar cutter and a huge closet full of hand-made shoes were testament to the baron’s obsessive pursuit of domestic perfection. He even took his own sheets with him to hospital.
In the 21st century Redé had himself become something of a museum piece, remnant of a vanished milieu for whom a well-laid table was the greatest good to which humanity could aspire. “Most of the world moves too fast for hand-made shoes, and elegant luncheons,” he reflected sadly, before dying in 2004.
Meanwhile the Hôtel Lambert, having been bought by a member of the Qatari royal family, faces an uncertain future.

Arturo Lopez-Wilshaw, one of a wave of fabulously wealthy South Americans who rose to social prominence in Paris in the early 20^th century. Lopez-Wilshaw made his money from potassium-rich guano deposits, and someone who could turn shit into gold was just the kind of man the baron needed to finance the lifestyle to which he very much wanted to become accustomed. Lopez, irritatingly, already had a wife, Patricia. “My relationship with Arturo and Patricia was complicated,” observes de Redé with commendable understatement.

Not entirely frivolous

By James Conway

Baron de Redé died on this day in 2004. With the support of his lover Arturo Lopez-Wilshaw and later his friends Guy and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, he cultivated a Pompadour existence amid the ancien régime splendour of Paris’s Hôtel Lambert. There he occasionally entertained, but it seems his was a solitary existence among the marquetry and parquetry of the Lambert’s doleful salons. Toward the end of his (posthumously published) memoirs, and thus toward the end of his life, he reflected on the “not…entirely frivolous pursuit” of keeping the old pile in the state to which it was once accustomed. The occasion for this particular wistful turn was the bestowal in 2003 of a French order, the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres:

I had had the good fortune to be able to pursue my selfish interests through the generosity of friends. I think particularly of Arturo, but more so in the context of the Lambert, of Guy and Marie-Hélène. Without Guy, the Lambert would have been sold, and it would not have survived in its present incarnation. My part in its history was as a loving catalyst, inspiring a love of the place in my friends. Thus it has been preserved, and I hope lovingly tended. I think the greatest joy in the honour I received that night was the confirmation that the pursuit and protection of beauty was not deemed to be an entirely frivolous pursuit. Indeed, I know from the daily care which an old building needs, that this pursuit requires considerable dedication and fortitude.

It is at moments when the world briefly stops to salute a person that that person stands back and examines what he has done. I have never claimed to do other than love beauty and luxury, and to seek to pass my time on this earth with the most interesting and aesthetically developed people of my age. This has been an enriching experience, and it has been enjoyable. I have been lucky. I hope I have given something back, and if nothing more I have protected the Hotel Lambert, this wonderful place, my home, for nearly sixty years.

Let that be my epitaph.

Consider it done.
(By the by: living laureates of this distinction – either chevalier, officier or commandeur – include Patti Smith, Nan Goldin, Stevie Wonder, Jeanne Moreau, Shahrukh Khan, Fairuz, Bob Dylan, Philip Glass, Kylie Minogue, Ned Rorem, Tim Burton and Amanda Lear. Which is quite the dinner party.)

The Marquis

By James Conway 

One more quick dip into the British Pathé archives; here we set the coordinates for Biarritz in 1953, where ballet impresario Marquis George de Cuevas is lavishing huge sums of his (wife’s) money on the Cuevas Ball.
The dueling Marquis was no less spendy than Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg had been in the between-the-wars era, but mounting such a spectacle amid the austerity of post-war France was of questionable wisdom. Among the guests at the 18th century-themed ball were “50 princes, 35 marquesses, 95 counts, 20 dukes”, a collision of cluelessness and noblesse of a kind not seen since Louis XVI opened his Filofax on 14 July 1789 and jotted down “rien”.
Cuevas was trying to make a name for himself and even more so for his beloved ballet company, but managed to piss off more or less everyone in the process. The Baron de Redé, who evidently didn’t receive an invite, gleefully trashes the party in his autobiography. Even those pillars of moral probity at the Vatican denounced its extravagance as an insult to the poor. Cuevas defended himself as best he could. “When a movie producer invests thousands in an insipid picture,” he moaned, “no one seems to have anything against it.”
But if anyone had cause for complaint it was the poor beast of burden trudging mournfully through the spectacle, the burden in this case being party-sized partygoer Elsa Maxwell.

The baron’s balls

By James Conway 

Sorry for the longer-than-anticipated pause, but I’m back. And today it’s all about Alexis von Rosenberg, the Baron de Redé, the “best-kept man in Paris” and one of the great entertainers of the 20^th century (“entertainers” used here in the Elsa Maxwell rather than the Johnny Mathis sense, you understand). I wrote about his magnificent Parisian home some time ago and promised we would return to talk about the parties he threw there – the kind of thing I often say and usually forget (see also: “I’ll be updating daily”).
But this time I remembered!
The baron, who was born in Zurich in 1922 and died in Paris on this day* in 2004, had no occupation as such, though he claimed “one never has enough time in which to do nothing”. In his case “nothing” included restoring the museum-like Hôtel Lambert, the sumptuous 17th century Paris residence he eventually shared with his friends Guy and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild.

Alexis works the room

Also within the “nothing” remit was Redé’s role as one of the city’s last great hosts, standing in a tradition of party-givers strung across 20^th century Paris like fairy lights: Étienne de Beaumont, George de Cuevas, Charles de Beistegui, Marie-Laure de Noailles. Redé was friends with them all, and took notes. The rake-thin, dapper baron, whom Nancy Mitford described as “a tie-pin, thin, stiff & correct with a weeny immovable head on a long stiff neck”, lived in the dying world of the beau monde, and only there. He was little known to the public and when not entertaining he preferred magnificent seclusion to the high profile antics of his famous friends, declaring “publicity is dangerous”.
Much of the baron’s entertaining therefore took place on a relatively modest scale in the Hôtel Lambert’s Hercules Gallery, either at a long table or at smaller individual settings. The auction of his estate in 2005 included elegantly painted diagrams showing the seating arrangements for these occasions. There’s Jeanne Moreau, for instance, opposite Salvador Dalí, bumping elbows with Guy de Rothshild. And if Madame Moreau were to get frisky and throw bread rolls, they would more likely than not have landed on an aristocrat.

Circulate, darling, circulate

But there were two notable larger events, the first in 1956. Extravagant headpieces was the theme of “Le Bal des Têtes”, essentially an Easter Bonnet Parade for people too rich to have ever experienced an Easter Bonnet Parade. Many of the ostentatious titfers were designed by a then-unknown Yves Saint Laurent, and the judges included the Duchess of Windsor (whose occupation really was just going to parties in Paris) and Charles de Beistegui.
And it was Beistegui who, we must presume, provided the inspiration for Redé’s other great ball, “Le Bal Oriental”. The Spanish bon vivant had, after all, hosted an event of the same name in a Venetian palazzo in 1951, often described as one of the great social events of the century, and at which Redé was a guest.
The baron’s blow-out took place on 5 December, 1969. For this highpoint on the Parisian social calendar, the Hôtel Lambert was lavishly decorated in a non-specific Orientalist style. Two enormous papier maché elephants stood in the courtyard as guests made their way to the entrance, where the grand staircase was flanked by black torchbearers (authenticity schmauthenticity, this was a party, not a National Geographic documentary). Alexandre Serebriakoff’s jewel-like watercolours of the event represent a high-water mark in high-society camp, perfectly capturing the gilded collision of Baroque and Bangkok; The Sun King and I, if you will.
Considering the riot of colour around him, the baron was relatively subdued, appearing as a Mogul prince in a deep blue costume designed by Pierre Cardin. Their association dated back 20 years: Cardin was at Christian Dior when Redé first asked him to run up something sensaysh on his Singer for Étienne de Beaumont’s “Bal des Rois”.

All of this was, of course, fabulous and over-the-top and probably a blast if you were there. But if the event had a weak point, it was the guest list. Redé had an old queen’s weakness for a title, perhaps conscious that his own baronetcy, while legitimate, was the subject of malicious gossip. Compare, for example, Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White Ball, another candidate for the party of the century. Capote put the very famous together with the very, very famous and had them all wear masks – a dash of wit that the baron sorely lacked.
The day after the Oriental Ball the Rolling Stones would play Altamont, an event commonly acknowledged as the end of the 60s; Redé seemed unaware the decade had ever started. Brigitte Bardot was about as swinging as the guest list got, otherwise the turbans generally sat on the same old titled heads.
Once the guests had left and the eastern trappings had been dismantled, the Baron withdrew from large-format entertaining, claiming that “it creates jealousy”. He lived out his days in the Lambert, at once his home and his greatest accomplishment.
* There is an odd lack of consensus over the date of his death; take your pick from 7, 8 or 9 July, 2004.