Ira von Fürstenberg, who got here as shut as one can get to having all of it as an Italian-born princess descended from Charlemagne, an heiress to the Fiat fortune, a Vogue mannequin, a big-screen ingénue and a globe-trotting bon vivant, died on Feb. 19 at her house in Rome. She was 83.
Her son, Hubertus von Hohenlohe, stated she died after breaking her ribs and perforating her lungs in a home accident.
Blending the gilded privilege of the old-world European aristocracy with the élan of the midcentury movie and style peerage, Ms. von Fürstenberg seemingly outlined the time period “jet setter,” bouncing between houses in Rome, London, Paris, Madrid and the shores of Lake Geneva.
“My only real home is on airplanes,” she stated. “I spend so much time going from country to country that my children suspect that I’m really a flight attendant.”
She shared a surname with the famend dressmaker, Diane von Fürstenberg, who married the princess’s dressmaker brother, Egon, in 1969. “When I first met Egon, she was the famous sister,” Diane advised Women’s Wear Daily final month. “She had gotten married in Venice and was a movie star.”
The princess flaunted each noble lineage and seemingly inexhaustible wealth from her mom, Clara, who was a granddaughter of Giovanni Agnelli, who based Fiat, and a sister of Gianni Agnelli, the dashing Fiat chief.
Her house in Paris was even fitted with strong gold tub faucets, as a result of, as she as soon as put it, “everybody has to see something beautiful in the morning in order to have a good day.”
Even so, Ms. von Fürstenberg was something however content material to settle into a lifetime of pampered indolence.
In her many careers, she posed for style shoots with luminary photographers like Irving Penn and Helmut Newton; walked the runway carrying a Mondrian costume by Yves Saint Laurent; appeared in movies with the actors Peter Lawford and Donald Pleasence; served as an govt for Valentino; and later grew to become an artist herself, exhibiting in museums ornamental objects customary from bronze, rock crystal and semiprecious stones.
Fame got here early to Ms. von Fürstenberg. At 15, she made headlines on either side of the Atlantic when she married the Spanish-born prince and playboy Alfonso Hohenlohe-Langenburg, affectionately often called the King of Clubs for his work founding the Marbella Club, a haven for stars and socialites, on Spain’s Costa del Sol.
Because of her younger age she wanted a particular dispensation from Pope Pius XII to marry the prince, who was 31, but there was little, if any, sniff of scandal. In truth, she graced the duvet of Life journal on Oct. 17, 1955, for what the journal deemed “the wedding of the year.”
“All the elements of a medieval romance were present for the wedding — the tapestried palaces, the tiaraed ladies, the gifts of costly silver and priceless jewels,” the journal reported.
Accompanying images confirmed the princess in a lace bridal robe, laughing joyously alongside the neatly mustached groom as they led a flotilla of greater than 100 adorned gondolas by way of the canals of Venice. The celebration lasted greater than two weeks, luring 400 European aristocrats.
Their union yielded glittering events around the globe and mingling among the many style and artwork elite, together with Salvador Dalí — who requested the newly wedded princess to pose nude, a request that she and her husband shortly rejected. They had two sons, Christoph, who died in Thailand in 2006, and Hubertus, a former Olympic skier for Mexico.
But the great instances wouldn’t final. In 1960, the couple drew significantly much less fawning press when the princess took up with Francisco Pignatari, often called Baby, a Brazilian industrialist and infamous playboy.
An article in Life that 12 months, headlined “A Princess’s Pretty Pickle,” reported that Ms. von Fürstenberg was “living modestly in a 17-room hotel suite in Mexico City,” the place her husband managed the Volkswagen franchise for the nation.
The prince wouldn’t go quietly. At 4 a.m. sooner or later, the article continued, cops banged on the princess’s door to go looking the suite. To the rescue got here Mr. Pignatari, greater than 20 years her senior, who was staying a flooring above her. He was briefly jailed on costs of adultery, however the costs had been shortly dropped for lack of proof.
As the couple spiraled towards divorce, the prince at one level absconded with the youngsters, dressing them in wigs to disguise them as women. The princess countered with a good-looking reward to seek out them.
However chivalrous the Brazilian mogul’s intentions in the course of the lodge raid, their love didn’t final, both. The couple married in Reno, Nev., in 1961 and divorced three years later.
“She had got caught up in a man’s world as half a child,” Hubertus later stated.
Her survivors embrace her son, Hubertus.
Virginia Carolina Theresa Pancrazia Galinda von und zu Fürstenberg was born on April 17, 1940, in Rome. Her father, Prince Tassilo Fürstenberg, traced his lineage to the German House of Fürstenberg; her mom was descended from scions of Italian business.
During World War II, the household ducked hostilities by transferring to Lausanne, Switzerland, later settling in Venice. Educated at boarding colleges in Switzerland and England, the princess was making public appearances by 13, serving as a swimwear mannequin for a household buddy, the Italian designer Emilio Pucci. Two years later, the photographer Cecil Beaton would seize a portrait of her with flowers in her hair.
After the turmoil of her marriages, Ms. von Fürstenberg met the movie producer Dino De Laurentiis on a flight in 1966. Mr. De Laurentiis was intrigued by her potential as an actress and shortly had her beneath contract.
The subsequent 12 months, she co-starred in “Dead Run,” an espionage thriller starring Mr. Lawford, and within the Italian spy spoof “Matchless,” starring Patrick O’Neal and Mr. Pleasence.
Not all critics had been charmed by her efficiency, with a evaluation by Howard Thompson in The New York Times saying: “A real, sure-enough member of royalty from the society columns, Princess Ira Fürstenberg, plays a bland, casually clad femme fatale.”
Undeterred, she went on to make greater than two dozen display appearances into the early Eighties, though she later stated she wished she had been seen as greater than a tawny-eyed temptress. “Directors only look at my navel, and producers only look at my name,” she as soon as stated. Her finest alternative at a breakout function, in “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” Franco Zeffirelli’s 1972 epic about St. Francis of Assisi, was snipped from the movie’s last reduce.
Still, she stated in a 2019 interview with Sotheby’s, she had no regrets about her years in movie.
“I may not have been that successful,” she added, “but I had a great time with my wonderful partners, and stories of that time are so many that I cannot remember.”
Near the top of her life, she regarded again with comparable fondness towards her time in style, mingling with associates like Diana Vreeland, the storied style editor, and the designer Karl Lagerfeld, who typically stayed together with her in her Swiss villa.
With her closets stuffed with designer garments, she by no means stopped presenting herself in a fashion befitting a princess.
As she recalled in a 2019 interview with Vogue: “My father used to say, ‘One must cover oneself.’”
Source: www.nytimes.com