Mona von Bismarck
Encyclopedia
Mona Travis Strader known as Mona Bismarck, was an American socialite and fashion icon. She was named to the International Best Dressed List
International Best Dressed List
The International Best Dressed List was founded by fashionista Eleanor Lambert in 1940 as an attempt to boost the reputation of American fashion at the time.People who have been on the list include from A to Z:-The International Hall of Fame: Women:...

 Hall of Fame in 1958.

Early life

She was born Mona Travis Strader in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

 in 1897 to Robert Sims Strader and his wife, Bird O'Shockeny. Her parents divorced in 1902, and Mona and her brother were raised in Lexington
Liberty Heights, Lexington
Liberty Heights is a neighborhood in southeastern Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Its boundaries are Winchester Road to the north, New Circle Road to the east, and R. J. Corman railroad tracks to the west and south. Industrial areas border Delaware ave...

, Kentucky, by their paternal grandmother.

Marriages

In 1917, she married Henry J. Schlesinger, a man 18 years her senior who owned Fairland Farm in Lexington where her father was a professional trainer, and moved to Milwaukee where he had an iron and coke business. During the marriage, Mona bore a son, Robert Henry, whom she left in the custody of Schlesinger in exchange for half a million dollars when they divorced in 1920. (Her son would marry Frederica Barker, elder sister of actor Lex Barker
Lex Barker
Lex Barker was an American actor best known for playing Tarzan of the Apes and leading characters from Karl May's novels.-Early life:...

.) She next married the banker James Irving Bush, 14 years her senior, said to be the "handsomest man in America" in 1921. They divorced in Paris in 1925.

In 1926, Mona opened a New York dress shop with her friend Laura Merriam Curtis, the daughter of William Rush "Spooky" Merriam, a former Governor of Minnesota. At the time, Laura was previously engaged to Harrison Williams, said to be the richest man in America with an estimated fortune of $600 million ($ in today dollars), made in financing public utilities. Mona married Williams, a widower 24 years her senior on July 2, 1926.
For their honeymoon they went on a cruise around the world on Williams' Warrior, the largest, most expensive pleasure boat in the world at the time. When they returned from their honeymoon, Williams bought the Georgian mansion at the corner of 94th Street & Fifth Avenue designed by Delano
William Adams Delano
William Adams Delano , an American architect, was a partner with Chester Holmes Aldrich in the firm of Delano & Aldrich. The firm worked in the Beaux-Arts tradition for elite clients in New York City, Long Island and elsewhere, building townhouses, country houses, clubs, banks and buildings for...

 & Aldrich in 1915 for Willard Straight
Willard Straight
Willard Dickerman Straight was an American investment banker, publisher, reporter and diplomat.-Biography:...

. Mona had it decorated by Syrie Maugham. They also kept an estate named Oak Point on Bayville Avenue, Bayville, Long Island
Bayville, New York
The Village of Bayville, often referred to as Pine Island, is a village located on Long Island Sound facing Greenwich, Connecticut, and within the town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 6,669 at the 2010 census...

, for which Delano and Aldrich also did alterations. They kept a home on North Ocean Avenue in Palm Beach
Palm Beach, Florida
The Town of Palm Beach is an incorporated town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. The Intracoastal Waterway separates it from the neighboring cities of West Palm Beach and Lake Worth...

, and the villa Il Fortino overlooking Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...

's Marina Grande, on land which belonged first to Caesar Augustus, and later to the Emperor Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...

.

In 1933, Mona was named "The Best Dressed Woman in the World" by Chanel
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...

, Molyneux
Edward Molyneux
Edward Henry Molyneux was a British fashion designer whose fashion house in Paris was in operation from 1919 until 1950.- Overview :Born in London to Justin Molyneux and Lizzy Kenny, Edward Molyneux attended Beaumont College, a Roman Catholic preparatory school...

, Vionnet
Madeleine Vionnet
This article is about the haute couture designer. For the fashion label, see Vionnet Madeleine Vionnet was a French fashion designer...

, Lelong
Lucien Lelong
Lucien Lelong was a French couturier who was prominent from the 1920s to the 1940s.-Career:Born in Paris as the son of Arthur Lelong, the owner of a textile shop, he trained at the Hautes Etudes de Commerciales in Paris and opened his fashion house in the late 1910s...

, and Lanvin
Jeanne Lanvin
Jeanne-Marie Lanvin was a French fashion designer and the founder of the Lanvin fashion house.One of the most influential designers of the 1920s and '30s, Jeanne Lanvin's skillful use of intricate trimmings, virtuoso embroideries and beaded decorations in clear, light, floral colors became a...

, becoming the first American to be so honored. The Duchess of Windsor (1934) and Elsie de Wolfe
Elsie de Wolfe
]Elsie de Wolfe was an American actress, interior decorator, nominal author of the influential 1913 book The House in Good Taste, and a prominent figure in New York, Paris, and London society...

 (1935) would also earn that title.

In "Ridin' High", (1936) Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

 had Ethel Merman sing: "What do I care if Mrs. Harrison Williams is the best dressed woman in town?" In 1943, Mona's portrait was painted by Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

.

Williams died in 1953, and Mona married her "secretary" Count Albrecht Edzard (Eddy) Heinrich Karl, Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1903-1970), an "interior decorator" of an aristocratic sort, and the son of Herbert von Bismarck
Herbert von Bismarck
Herbert, Prince of Bismarck was a German politician, who served as Foreign Secretary from 1886 to 1890. His political career was closely tied to that of his father, Otto von Bismarck, and he left office a few days after his father's dismissal...

 and grandson of the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...

, in November 1954 in New Jersey. They lived mostly in Paris at an apartment in the famed Hôtel Lambert
Hôtel Lambert
Hôtel Lambert is a hôtel particulier, a grand mansion townhouse, on the Quai Anjou on the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis, Paris IVème; the name, Hôtel Lambert, was a sobriquet that designated a 19th-century political faction of Polish exiles, who gathered there.-Architectural history:The house...

 and later at Mona's townhouse at 34 avenue de New York, and at Capri.

Mona was widowed in 1970 and in 1971 married Bismarck's physician, "Count" Umberto de Martini, a nobleman (after Mona acquired a title for him from king Umberto II of Italy
Umberto II of Italy
Umberto II, occasionally anglicized as Humbert II was the last King of Italy for slightly over a month, from 9 May 1946 to 12 June 1946. He was nicknamed the King of May -Biography:...

) who was 14 years younger than she. It was only after his death in a sports car accident in 1979 that Mona realized that de Martini, like Bismarck, had married her for her money (exactly the same way she had, with Schlesinger, Bush and Williams, so many years before), only de Martini turned out to be already married and had been secretly bilking Mona of funds for his children.

When Cristobal Balenciaga
Cristóbal Balenciaga
Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre was a Spanish Basque fashion designer and the founder of the Balenciaga fashion house....

 closed his atelier in 1968, Diana Vreeland
Diana Vreeland
Diana Vreeland was a noted columnist and editor in the field of fashion. She worked for the fashion magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Born as Diana Dalziel, Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite mother Emily Key Hoffman...

 quipped that Mona did not leave her bedroom in the villa at Capri for three days.
Mona donated her papers and photos to the Filson Historical Society in 1976, and several items of unique jewelry to the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

, including the Bismarck Sapphire Necklace
Bismarck Sapphire Necklace
The Bismarck Sapphire Necklace is a sapphire necklace designed by Cartier, Inc. in 1935. As of 2010, the necklace is on display between the Hall Sapphire and Diamond Necklace and the Logan Sapphire in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals at the Smithsonian Institution's...

.

In Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

's Answered Prayers (1987), she was the model for the character Kate McCloud.

Mona died in 1983, her will having established the Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris. She is buried at Bayville, on Long Island.

External links

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