Sleep On It

The noted couturier and artist Ralph Rucci recounts how he came to spend his nights in the bespoke bed once owned by the impossibly chic Baroness Pauline de Rothschild.

- Lars Leetaru

IT WAS LATE in life, perhaps 1977, when I discovered this avatar, this shocking touchstone of enormous vision, endless taste, and shattering style: the Baroness Pauline de Rothschild. This experience changed my life and my entire approach to creativity as a designer and an artist. Pauline de Rothschild, Elsa Peretti, and Diana Vreeland are the three women who shaped my work for the rest of my life.

My study of Pauline began with American Vogue magazine, December 1963. The holiday issue was always an explosion of editor in chief Vreeland’s vision, as she was the Enchantress of Fashion Journalism. For this particular edition, she sent the photographer Horst P Horst and his partner, Valentine Lawford, to Château Mouton Rothschild to capture how Pauline and Baron Philippe lived in their private wonderland.

I think that every fashion designer, every interior designer, every man and woman of social position, and those in training were bewitched by the sheer audacity of Pauline’s juxtaposition of objects, art, statuary, and her haute couture and jewels. It was an aesthetic explosion for a world that saw Pauline not as only a woman but also as a religion.

Vreeland knew that she was onto something big, big, big.

Then, she sent Horst and Lawford back for the Vogue March 1965 issue to photograph the baron and Pauline working late at night, putting together the museum in the basement of the chateau. It was the unique Musée du Vin dans l’Art—a display of rare goblets and other objects celebrating wine. Well, let’s just say that the photographs that Horst sent back went beyond even Vreeland’s expectations! The baroness planned and staged an opera for the senses. She had new couture made by Yves Saint Laurent and for the shoot donned a previous look from Cristóbal Balenciaga’s last collection.