She was married in
the Church of Osthoffen to Fiat tycoon Gianni Agnelli on 19 November
1953; they would remain married until his death on 24 January 2003.
They had two children
Agnelli, who was
educated in Paris, was an assistant to Erwin Blumenfeld in New York
City early in her varied career, as well as an occasional editor and
photographic contributor to Vogue. In 1973, she created a textile
line for Abraham-Zumsteg, for which she was awarded the Resources
Council's Roscoe (the design trade's equivalent of the Oscar) in
1977.
An avid gardener,
Agnelli has authored a number of books on the subject, also providing
many of the photographs. Two of her books are about the Garden of
Ninfa (1999) and The Agnelli Gardens at Villar Perosa (1998).
More recently, she
oversaw the opening of the Renzo Piano-designed art gallery
Pinacoteca Giovanni and Marella Agnelli (it:Pinacoteca Giovanni e
Marella Agnelli), built on the roof of the former Lingotto Fiat
factory in Turin, Italy. The Agnelli collection includes Picasso,
Renoir, Canaletto, Matisse and Canova materpieces.
The reserved,
patrician tastemaker and socialite is also known for her inclusion in
Truman Capote's circle of "swans" – wealthy, stylish, and
well-married women friends whose company he adored because they "had
created themselves, as he had done", and "had stories to
tell" According to Capote, Agnelli was "the European swan
numero uno", the youngest in a group that included Babe Paley,
Gloria Guinness, C. Z. Guest, Slim Keith, and Pamela Harriman, among
others. In her autobiography, Washington Post publisher and Capote
friend Katharine Graham recounts that the author once told her that
if Paley and Agnelli were "both in Tiffany's window, Marella
would be more expensive"
She was portrayed in
the American biographical film Infamous (2006) by Isabella
Rossellini.
Fairytale
of the jetset swans
Nick Foulkes
looks back in rapture at the effortless glamour of the 1960s
globetrotting elite
BY NICK FOULKES
NOVEMBER 02, 2013 07:00
The recent death of
Alan Whicker reminded me of one of my all-time favourite pieces of
television – a documentary he made on Fiona Thyssen (née
Campbell-Walter) in the early 1960s. She was one of the first women
to make modelling socially acceptable; so socially acceptable that
she caught the eye of a young baron, Heinrich “Heini” Thyssen. In
his copyrighted cadences, Whicker introduces us to the glamorous
baroness as if narrating a “once upon a time” jetset fairytale:
“One day a rich Baron – a very rich Baron – swept down out of
the mountains to claim her as his third bride and carry her off to a
place at the end of the rainbow where rich people go to be happy: St
Moritz.”
The best thing is
that not only does she look rich and happy, she is drop-dead gorgeous
in a leopardskin coat, driving her open-topped silver-blue BMW 507 at
speed to the airstrip at Samedan where her husband has just landed in
a light aircraft. In another scene, she is having her hair dressed
while trying on a ring of 25 carats, diamond drop earrings of 25
carats a piece, and a densely set necklace with a stone the size of a
hen’s egg, which she guessed is at least a further 50 carats .
I first caught this
documentary late one night and was transfixed. This was the 1960s
that I had longed to see ; the sleek world of the jet set, evoked by
the lines of the song Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? and the 1965
film Darling. Thing was, this piece of non-fiction television topped
everything. And it is this weakness for a fairytale time that was
actually true that compelled me to write a book about these people,
who lived on a scale that even now seems extraordinary – Gloria
Guinness reportedly decorating her husband’s plane with Louis XVI
furniture; the Shah asking Lanvin to design clothes for his
courtiers. As for jewels, women were dressed in gems in the way that
the rest of us might bedeck a Christmas tree.
What made this
period in jewellery design fascinating was the arrival of the jet
aircraft, which irreversibly shrank the world. Jet travel is
something we now take for granted but it was not always so. For a
decade and a half, jet travel was inextricably linked to glamour; a
world that had moved at the sedate pace of the stately ocean liner
was now soaring above the clouds at hundreds of miles an hour.
Cultures and customs could be experienced, one after another, within
a few hours and all sorts of places cropped up on the resort radar of
the rich: Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe’s Marbella Club, Karim Aga
Khan’s Costa Smeralda and Colin Tennant’s Mustique .
Style continued to
be concentrated in the hands of a very few women. Beautiful,
glamorous and above all international, they were married to ship
owners, auto-tycoons, oil magnates and broadcasting barons; the
nobility of the old world and the industrial aristocracy of the new.
Truman Capote called them his “swans” – Gloria Guinness, Babe
Paley, Slim Keith, Marella Agnelli, Jacqueline de Ribes and Jackie
Kennedy’s sister, Lee Radziwill. In time they were joined by a
generation of younger women, among them Marisa Berenson and Diane von
Furstenberg.
But the “swans”
did not always play nicely. One anecdote concerns the Guinnesses and
Paleys, who often summered together aboard the Guinness yacht,
Calypso. One year Gloria told Babe not to bother to bring any smart
clothes or jewellery as it would be a low-key summer. A few hours
after the Paleys had come on board, Gloria emerged from her stateroom
dressed up and dripping in gems. The following summer, Babe took no
chances and emptied the safe. “Really, darling, why all the
jewellery?” asked Gloria, in wide-eyed astonishment at the
selection of gems Babe had brought. “We’re just on the boat.”
During that cruise there were no formal dinners.
Jewellery of this
time was all about daring combinations of motifs and stones. The old
and slightly bourgeois distinctions between precious and
semi-precious stones was swept away by a tide of creativity and an
appetite for colour and effect. Long, polychrome sautoirs and bright
pendant earrings became the thing; a sort of hippy deluxe look
captured by Van Cleef’s Alhambra. One-off pieces revelled in
wildness. One of my favourite pieces was by Cartier in 1974,
featuring two large tusks set in yellow gold, attached to a collar
with circular links of gold and what I can only refer to as a bib
made of more tusks.
Until recently I’ve
been in a minority in my enthusiasm for the adornment of this time.
Now a younger generation of high jewellery customer is being enticed,
viewing the jetset era as an exotic epoch, not an embarrassing style
lapse. Definitive proof came when, taking the polyglot and polychrome
influences of the period, Van Cleef & Arpels launched its Pierres
de Caractère collection, a homage to Pierre Arpels who, like the
women for whom he designed, was as much at home in the Place Vendôme
as he was in India seeking out the stones to create some of the most
inventive and creative jewellery of the 20th century.
Arpels conjured a
world of tassels and textures, where wood met diamonds on equal
terms. Coral cabochons mixed with brilliant cut diamonds in
Siamese-inspired bangles; Indian paisley motifs were reworked into
jewellery using the dazzling palette of ruby, sapphire and emerald;
rings echoing the profiles of the temples of Indochina were worn on
the sun-gilded fingers of Capote’s “swans”. The bestiaries of
exotic mythologies were transformed into brooches or pendants set
with emeralds, amethysts, chrysoprase… colour and character was
everything.
I was invited to
write a short essay for the catalogue accompanying the collection and
I hope that in my non-academic but genuinely enthusiastic way, I
encouraged people to look again at the jetset era, when the great
jewellers of the world were able to get “with it” and had the
customers who could wear it.
I will end with a
wonderful line from Peter Evans’s Nemesis about that totemic jetset
figure Aristotle Onassis. In the book, Maria Callas is quoted as
saying that the Greek ship-owner’s “total understanding of women
came out of a Van Cleef & Arpels catalogue”. I’d say that one
has a far better chance of understanding women by studying a fine
jewellery catalogue than an Argos brochure.
Swans: Legends of
the Jet Society, by Nicholas Foulkes, is published by Assouline;
assouline.com
The exclusive world of one of the twentieth century’s most glamorous and alluring women, as seen through her private homes and gardens. Nicknamed "The Swan" by Richard Avedon when he photographed her iconic portrait in 1953, Marella Agnelli is not only one of the great beauties of the last century, but also the most elegant and cultured of that exclusive club. Born the Neapolitan princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto, she became Marella Agnelli with her marriage to Gianni Agnelli, the Fiat industrialist. However, her innate style dates back to her New York internship with photographer Erwin Blumenfeld, and she was a Vogue contributor in the 1950s and ’60s as well as appearing in its pages. One of the most photographed women of the jet-set society, she was captured by Avedon as well as Irving Penn, Henry Clarke, Horst, and Robert Doisneau, among others. Agnelli collaborated with the best artists and designers of her day, with her many residences as their palette. From Italian interior design legend Renzo Mongiardino—who worked on her New York apartment alongside a young Peter Marino—to Gae Aulenti, the important Italian architect, who built her homes in Turin and Marrakech, Agnelli created a series of extraordinary houses and gardens, full of timeless elegance, invaluable art, and groundbreaking decorating ideas. With ten residences spread throughout Turin, Rome, Milan, New York, St. Moritz, and Marrakech, ranging from regally classic villas to ultramodern apartments, her impeccable taste shines through in these gorgeous interiors and gardens. One of the famous modern fairy tales of love, glamour, and heartbreak, Marella Agnelli has become an icon of our times.
Marella Agnelli: The Last Swan
Reviewed by:
Jeffrey Felner
“Marella Agnelli:
The Last Swan is a collection of rare beauty that allows us to live
within her world if only while enjoying this book.”
The first thing that
comes to mind is “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” The life of
Marella Agnelli is one of unimaginable wealth and privilege. Her
homes cannot be fathomed by mere mortals. Her beauty is legendary.
Marella Agnelli The
Last Swan is one of those rare books that chronicles a life within a
family legacy. What you quickly find out is that this book is not so
much about “the Last Swan” as it is about how she lived and what
she loved and the seemingly endless resources it took to accomplish
her various missions.
Upon starting the
unbelievable journey of Marella Agnelli, we see her pictured within
the confines of her many homes, wearing the finest of couture, and
photographed by many of the greatest photographers of the 20th
century. The photos and text may lead you to think that this is only
about her life, which it is, but it is her life in relation to what
she has built and orchestrated. Ms. Agnelli reigns over a kingdom of
homes that rival any in the world. Simply stated, Marella makes Bunny
Mellon look like she lived in a trailer park.
This book is an
endless source of amazement as Ms. Agnelli has created “worlds”
that are unknown to most of us. It is like having Central Park as
your backyard or the Tuileries or the Boboli gardens as your own
private spots for reflection or puttering around in the flower beds.
Even those who are not botanically inclined will note that the
incredible world of art she created outdoors is astounding.
As if the mind
boggling gardens and grounds are not enough to keep you enthralled,
there are the homes that this woman assembled in her life. They may
not be to your taste but are jawdropping nonetheless. Imagine having
to move so you can accommodate an art collection (think Renoir,
Picasso, Balthus, Matisse) in one particular home. Imagine employing
some of the greatest architects and interior designers of the 20th
century to outfit all of these homes used to suit the globetrotting
lifestyle of Mr. and Mrs. Agnelli. Mind boggling.
The takeaway is that
if you have any curiosity about “how the other half lives” or
more aptly put how one lives when one has endless finances coupled
with huge esthetic powers and thirst, well then this is for you.
Marella Agnelli: The Last Swan is a collection of rare beauty that
allows us to live within her world if only while enjoying this book.
Lastly what must be
addressed is the title or subtitle, The Last Swan. It is a bit of a
misnomer as she is indeed not the last one. Some of her fellow
“swans” still live—albeit not nearly as grandly as she. And for
those truly unaware, the term “swan” was given to a small group
of wildly socially acceptable women who at one time were dear friends
to the late Truman Capote until he betrayed their confidences.
Jeffrey Felner is a
dedicated participant and nimble historian in the businesses of
fashion and style. Decades of experience allow him to pursue almost
any topic relating to fashion and style with unique insight and
unrivaled acumen.
By
Marella Caracciolo
Chia
Marella Agnelli
Release Date:
October 14, 2014
Publisher/Imprint:
Rizzoli
An
Enchanting Estate in Northern Italy
Style icon
Marella Agnelli offers a rare look inside her family’s captivating
18th-century retreat
TEXT BY
MARELLA CARACCIOLO
CHIA
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
OBERTO GILI
Posted August 31,
2014 · Magazine
One morning last
spring, my aunt Marella Agnelli woke early at her home in the
Northern Italian city of Turin and announced that she and I would
spend the day at Villar Perosa, the Agnelli estate some 40 miles to
the west. Eager to see its gardens, my father’s sister proposed
that we have lunch beside the swimming pool there and return before
dusk. We had been working solidly for the past week, putting the
final touches on Marella Agnelli: The Last Swan, our book about her
life as a style icon, photographer, textile designer, and inspired
amateur decorator and gardener (to be published by Rizzoli in
October), so the outing was a welcome break.
On the way she sat
next to the driver, with her dogs—Chico, a Chihuahua, and a Shiba
Inu called, simply enough, Shiba—on her lap, and reminisced about
her first visit to Villar. It was September 1953, and the occasion
was the wedding of her friend Maria Sole Agnelli to Count Ranieri
Campello della Spina. That same evening my aunt (then Marella
Caracciolo di Castagneto) and the bride’s eldest brother, Gianni,
announced their engagement. Having recently returned to Italy after
spending 18 months in New York City assisting fashion photographer
Erwin Blumenfeld, Marella was bewitched by the pre–World War I
atmosphere of the Agnellis’ house. "There was this sense of
being in an enchanted time warp," she said, recalling how a
housemaid in an apron that nearly reached the floor brought her
breakfast in bed on a silver tray. "Villar was an old family
home full of charm and nostalgia."
More than six
decades later, that atmosphere of timelessness still hovers over this
beloved retreat, where eight generations (and counting) of Agnellis
have arrived with children and dogs in tow. Within view of the French
Alps, the 18th-century former hunting lodge attributed to architect
Filippo Juvarra is a graceful essay in Piedmontese Baroque. According
to Gianni, who inherited it in the 1940s and died in 2003, his
ancestor Giuseppe Agnelli, a Napoleonic officer, acquired the estate
in the early 19th century and planted mulberry trees for raising
silkworms. That investment gave rise to a fortune that, in 1899,
helped launch Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino, a.k.a. Fiat,
Italy’s largest automotive company, where Gianni served as chairman
for 30 years.
By the time my aunt
and Gianni married, the classical decorator Stephane Boudin had
already restored a portion of the house damaged by bombing in World
War II, and he continued to assist the newlyweds. Marella and the
puckish Parisian collaborated with purposeful sensitivity. Gianni’s
parents and grandparents had died when he was young, leaving behind
rooms furnished with memories, so his bride, the daughter of a
Neapolitan prince and a mother from Peoria, Illinois, was determined
to tread softly.
Boudin and Marella
refreshed the piano nobile’s famous gallery, where exuberant
stuccowork frames 18th-century Chinese export wallpaper and garlands
the ceiling. They upholstered the villa’s antique Piedmontese
chairs and settees—painted in pale, pretty colors that bring to
mind macarons—in bold French velvets and Italian silks, and
made-to-measure sofas added modern comfort. Alongside the main dining
room, they set up a cozy library for after-dinner coffee. A few guest
rooms became perfect expressions of ancien régime French taste, the
decorator’s specialty. Boudin’s friend Russell Page, the British
garden genius, helped Marella clarify the landscape, which she
described as having been "a patchwork, each area created by a
different generation."
Her increasing
confidence as a gardener led her back inside the house, where she
began dressing some spaces in a less formal, more familial mode. (Her
son, Edoardo, was born in 1954 and her daughter, Margherita, a year
later.) With wicker furniture cushioned in bright patterns and finely
woven straw matting on the floor, the so-called garden room marks the
moment when Marella left behind Boudin’s historicism in favor of
her own simpler, contemporary taste. Unlined taffeta curtains with
softly ruffled hems became part of her vocabulary, as did cheerful
printed fabrics—she even designed an award-winning textile
collection in the ’70s.
Then, 30 years ago,
the frequent presence of eight lively grandchildren prompted Marella
to transform a portion of the top floor into a private sanctuary.
Following the advice of an old friend, decorator Federico Forquet,
she fashioned four bedrooms. Among them is her intimate,
low-ceilinged suite, lavished from walls to lampshades with a peony
pattern. Another is Gianni’s barrel-vaulted chamber, where she
curtained the imposing canopy bed with mismatched chintzes—one a
dramatic Indian-style floral, the other dappled with white roses like
those that bloom outside the arched window.
Anyone who has spent
time at Villar joins in the Agnelli traditions. Morning hikes in the
foothills of the Alps are typically followed by chess and Scrabble in
the garden room. European newspapers are stacked in strategic spots,
and books in Italian, French, and English are arranged in baskets on
a large table, ready for perusal. There has also been, as long as I
can remember, a card table set with a 3,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that
takes family and friends an entire month to complete. In hot weather
everyone decamps to the swimming pool and the adjacent wood
pavilion—as spare as a Zen temple—by architect Gae Aulenti.
Landscape designer Paolo Pejrone, a Page disciple, has banked this
section with purple heather punctuated by ‘Iceberg’ roses and
boxwood clipped into corkscrews and spheres. It is a destination
cherished by all, from oldest to youngest, a success that is proof of
my aunt’s attention to detail.
"Every time I
create a home or a garden, I ask myself the same questions,"
Marella said as we sat beside the pool, our lunch finished and the
sun setting. "Where will we gather together in the daytime and
in the evening? How can I preserve a few quiet, secluded spots for
reading or working? Which is the coolest area in the garden for meals
in the shade? Architecture and landscapes influence our lives so
much—I’m always fascinated by that."
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