Luciana Malgeri
13.I.1935- 13.X.2008
Princess Pignatelli
Mrs. Burt Simms Avedon
Italian Socialite & Social Arbiter
Spokes Model & Jewelry Designer
Vreelandesque Beauty Guru
“A few times every century, a great beauty is born. I am not one of them. But what nature skipped, I supplied—so much so that sometimes I cannot remember what is real and what is fake.”
Princess Luciana Pignatelli
She was born Luciana Malgeri in Italy on January 13, 1935, the daughter of Francesco Malgeri, a well respected Italian journalist, and his wife, Nelida Lenci, formerly Countess Crespi,
Most of Luciana’s seventy odd years was spent in the pursuit of beauty. As she herself explained, "glamour can begin only when all the groundwork has been laid."
With her it began early, for the groundwork was laid and the quest for beauty came in adolescence, when "all legs and big feet, thick at the waist and thick in the nose," this great “lump of a girl” was taken in hand by her half-brother, Count Rodolfo Crespi.
Together with his beautiful wife, Rudi suggested lipstick, while his wife, Consuelo set aside some of her best dresses, and at 18, Luciana was shuttled from Rome to London for her first beautifying procedure, to have her nose fixed. In preparation for the makeover, she was handed a chart of famous noses from which to choose her style. The final nose agreed upon was a combination between the noses of Vivien Leigh and Consuelo’s, her sister-in-law Countess Crespi.
The initial step in transforming the ugly duckling into the beautiful swan was complete and the results paid off with Luciana making a grand marriage by the age of 19.
On June 20, 1954, Luciana married Prince Don Nicolò Maria Pignatelli Aragon Cortès, 17th Prince of Noia. Born on May 22 1923 he was a handsome, clever nobleman from Italy’s black aristocracy, and at the time was an executive with Gulf Oil.
As a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Don Nicolò was also 9th Duke of Terranova, 17th Prince of Castelvetrano, Prince of Maida, Prince of Valle, Duke of Bellosguardo, Duke of Girifalco, Duke of Orta, 19th Marquess of Cerchiara, 19th Marquess of Avola, Marquess of Favara, Marquess of Caronia, Marquess of Borghetto, Count of Celano, Baron of Casteltermini, Baron of Menfi, and Patrician of Naples.
While living a sybaritic lifestyle among the very rich in the 1950’s & 60's the couple had two children: Princess Donna Fabrizia (born January 30, 1956, married Stephen Fiamma) and Prince Don Diego (born May 21, 1958, married Cristina Prandoni Porta), who is a managing director of Warburg Dillon Read in Italy.
As Princess Pignatelli she became a fashion icon of the “jet set” and was even named to the International Best-Dressed List in 1966. In a life full of parties and social gatherings enjoyed around the globe and at some point having crossed paths with Truman Capote, who was known to be very fond of her, and considered her one of his "Swans", although she was more a lesser swan when it came down to it, she achieved further notoriety.
Lawrence Fried immortalized her in his famous picture as the Italian princess who wore a giant 60 carat diamond dangling from her headdress at Capote’s famed Black & White Ball in 1966. One can only imagine what her disappointment and bitterness might have been if she had known at the time that her name appeared only two names above the cutoff point of the list, thereby making her importance or lack thereof blatantly clear. At least in Truman’s company she was a living example of her own advice as she once claimed that "After age 30, every woman needs a homosexual in her life".
By the late 1960’s her partnership with the prince had become tempestuous. "Marriage," as she says in her book, ''stuffs the two of you so close together you can see love dying all over the walls." Conceding that the union was "a disaster" from which she emerged, 15 years later, with two children, one title and "a shattered ego," the marriage was annulled in 1968.
In an effort to reinvent herself and to help rebuild her life, she had silicone injections to fill out her cheeks and plastic surgery that lifted her upper eyelids but these procedures did nothing for her spirit.
Hypnosis, yoga, cell implants and love affairs helped her morale, but by the end of one liaison Luciana realized, "I had really become very plain looking—almost nothing on my face, nothing on my nails, the most casual clothes." After another year during which she was "so bored I used to remove the hairs from my legs, one by one, with tweezers," Luciana went back to Rome to face facts and her mirror: beauty, after all, was her business.
It was there back in Rome that she became a fashion coordinator and beauty consultant to Eve of Roma, a cosmetic house, and that led directly to another husband: Eve's president, Burt Simms Avedon, a cousin of the famous photographer, Richard Avedon. By this marriage she gained three stepdaughters. Sadly, this marriage as well ended in divorce in 1980.
Rising above it all and while still touted as Princess Luciana Pignatelli, she authored a book titled, The Beautiful People's Beauty Book (McCall, 1970), which her husband Burt Avedon described as "a straightforward approach to narcissism".
In her own words, as told to Jeanne Molli, Luciana revealed the secrets and sham, pressures and rewards of a lifetime dedicated to pleasing that most demanding, unrelenting, infinitely precious of friends—the mirror. Saturated with beauty tips and tidbits, both from the author and her friends, the book is now considered somewhat kitschy.
Luciana herself claimed to have had her hair streaked white-blonde once a month, reserved a fast day (mashed potatoes and chamomile tea) every two weeks, and took liver injections every two months to smoothe her skin. Her personal recommendations included washing hair with jhassoul ("Ask friends going to Morocco to get a few bars"), smoking Filipino cigars instead of skin-sallowing cigarettes, constant visits to the hairdresser and gymnast, separate bedrooms ("much more conducive to sex") and homosexuals as friends ("a brief, loud hurrah for their incredible eye for line, proportion, detail and style").
Luciana also quoted her mother's beauty plan: "I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I go to bed early. I exercise, and I walk 21 miles every day." "After she turned 60, she also had her face lifted," added her daughter proudly.
By the mid 1970s, and while still known as Princess Luciana Pignatelli, she became the spokesperson for the soap Camay, appearing in national and international television commercials. Her performances were called "strangely somnambulistic" by cultural critic Camille Paglia.
As with most, old age tends to be unkind, especially with the once beautiful. The ravages of time tend to appear on all levels, for Luciana this was no exception.
Princess Luciana Pignatelli died at age seventy-three on October 13, 2008 after taking sleeping tablets washed down with a bottle of gin. In her mind, the late princess felt she had lost out on two currencies: her money and her looks and she could have managed with only one of them but not without both. “I can’t face being old and poor,” she told her friends after learning all of her investments were worthless.
A memorial service for the woman who had once been the object of desire for Italy’s most dashing men about town, including Fiat’s Gianni Agnelli and his brother-in-law (Prince) Carlo Caraccioli, founder of the left-centre newspaper La Repubblica was held for her in Rome not long after her tragic exit.
Images Of A Princess
In 1995
One Of Her Last Interviews
WHY WE LOVE FASHION? IT'S A CHALLENGE
An Unfinished Woman
By Mary Tannen
The New York Times
February 23, 2003
A slim volume falls into my hands, an artifact from a lost civilization: ''The Beautiful People's Beauty Book,'' by Princess Luciana Pignatelli, copyright 1970. Though an as-told-to book, it retains the Italian author's idiosyncratic syntax and let-them-eat-cake attitude. (On the danger of not keeping up with beauty routines: ''You take away this, take away that, and in six months you look like a cook.'') Inscrutable recipes for facial masks (''one tablespoon of lanolin and one teaspoon of Balsam of Peru, mixed until smooth'') jostle with enigmatic glimpses of la dolce vita (''Last year in Sardinia, where we all ended up nude on a deserted beach, I put my bikini on my face'').
Want to know about eye makeup? The princess quotes from Talitha Getty, the wife of J. Paul Jr., who uses kohl obtained in Marrakesh, traditionally kept in an ivory bottle and applied with an ivory stick. Talitha, one of the princess's friends whose photos adorn the book, affects a blasé attitude toward beauty: ''With a good man, a woman doesn't need treatments, health foods, vitamins, or anything . . . not at first.''Although on camera Sophia Loren might resort to surgical tape to lift ''the skin up and back between eye and ear,'' at home ''she wears almost no cosmetics -- a bit of black makeup for the eyes and a splash of Joy for the pleasure.''
Thank God Pignatelli is not like Buxy Gancia, a former Chanel model, who breezily advises, ''Have a cold shower at 8 a.m. and breakfast with the children.'' The princess understands that most of us have to work at it. ''I underwent hypnosis,'' she writes, ''had cell implants, diacutaneous fibrolysis, silicone injections, my nose bobbed and my eyelids lifted.''
''I have tried aromatherapy, approached yoga and still go to the best gymnast in Rome,'' she continues. ''Facials and pedicures are normal routine, as are frequent hair and makeup changes. I will try anything new in beauty.''
Thirty-five years old when the book is written, she is a beauty warrior, already manning the battlements against the onslaught of aging. ''Like most women, I have always been afraid of wrinkles and lines. My approach is to get at them before they really dig in. People less critical than I might not notice them, but I see smile lines, a crinkle at the eye, and already I have visions of a face that hangs down to my ankles.''
Indeed, the face on the dust jacket is headed fearlessly into the winds of time, blond hair flying, full lips set (but not so firmly as to cause pucker creases). At one time, this face was everywhere: on the covers of Life, Ladies' Home Journal and Town & Country and in television commercials for Camay soap. The princess was one of those beauty icons whose looks instruct the hopeful strivers: ''You too could be a beautiful person, if you would only get some bigger sunglasses and try this coral lipstick.''
I do the arithmetic. By now, the princess should be 68. What becomes of a woman whose face has been her fortune? Did she retire, like Garbo, into dimly lit seclusion? Search engines turn up intriguing dead ends (for instance, a Web site for Bhutan).
There's a rumor that she's in Katmandu. The Manhattan telephone directory lists her sister-in-law, Consuelo Crespi, who says that there is a son living in London who might know. Eventually, I get a European mobile telephone number. The princess is in Rome. ''I feel like a mummy you are digging out of a tomb,'' she says, sounding like anything but. We arrange to meet in London.
Even on a gloomy day, the light in her London flat is good. It reveals a tall, slender woman with impeccable posture, wearing an unforgiving Missoni knit dress. But there is nothing to forgive. ''I still feel strongly about exercise,'' she says. ''Every day of my life I do my half-hour. It's a conditioned reflex.''
The light plays on a 10-sided dining table paved in a mosaic of abalone and mother-of-pearl (Italian) and on a large chest of drawers covered in ivory and mother-of-pearl (Syrian). There are carved chairs from Thailand, two sofas draped in white-on-white shawls from Kashmir. There is one bedroom, with a low Indian mother-of-pearl bed frame. The apartment is compact, the lair of a gypsy. All around, in frames elaborate or simple, are photos of the face.
In the book, the princess is generous with details from her life. Now I am eager to catch up on the next installment. Indulgently, she pulls out photo albums. There's the wedding picture from when she was 19 and married the handsome Prince Nicolò Pignatelli Aragona Cortes. It was considered a ''brilliant match'' for this daughter of a prominent Italian journalist. But marriage ''stuffs the two of you so close together you can see love dying all over the walls,'' the book said of this union, which lasted eight years and produced two children. Now she is on the ''best of terms'' with the prince, who lives in London. ''He's mellowed more than me. I'm a little bit of a terrorist. He is like a cardinal.'' The children also live in London, with families of their own. ''My children are the most conservative. They look at me like this little nut case.''
There's a photo of her with her second husband, Burt Avedon, a cousin of the famous photographer. She waves the picture away with the back of her hand: ''My ill-fated marriage.'' Since then there have been no more husbands, only ''temporary relations.''
She was living in New York: ''I had a flat in 555 Park Avenue, which I sold to Barbara Walters, and I went around the world with my Filipino maid. I was going to travel for a year, and I never went back. That started the Oriental part of my life.''
Keeping in mind what a French friend once told me, that aging coquettes turn to religion, I expect the princess to reveal that she achieved enlightenment with a guru she met on her travels. She laughs. ''My spirituality -- I find it in an antidepressant.'' In her journeys, she says, she has come upon ''exceptional human beings, but around them is a clique that is commercial.''
''I have always found this,'' she continues. ''Human nature is at fault.''
Instead, what she discovered in Thailand, Nepal and, lately, India, is craftsmanship. She was able to develop relationships to which she could contribute her instinct for what the elite likes. In Thailand, she designed jewelry; in Nepal, pashmina shawls. Her latest venture is designing and overseeing the production of jewelry using semiprecious gems, to be sold in India's palace luxury hotels. ''It's crazy that at the end of my life I get something that I feel very much. Maybe all my life I was learning.''
A pair of antique Chinese kissing fish, carved from crystal and adorned with small ruby bubbles, nestles at her throat, suspended from a chain of gem-studded rings from Thailand. ''I had an awful theft of jewelry,'' she says. ''Everything was stolen.''Then she took the fish ornament on her table and fashioned it into a necklace. ''I invent all the time. From something that goes wrong, I make right.''
We duck around the corner to a modest Thai noodle bar for lunch. The proprietor greets the princess like an old friend. She'll have her usual, seafood on fried noodles, and a glass of white wine. Now that we have caught up on her life, I'm eager to hear about the other characters in the book, her friends who shared their beauty secrets.
But as I have gleaned by now, the princess does not cling to the past. She saw Sophia Loren in an airport once, but the film star didn't seem to recognize her. ''Buxy Gancia came over to me someplace, but I didn't recognize her.'' Talitha? She gives me a quizzical look. ''Ah, Talitha,'' she says. ''She died of a drug overdose. Her husband fled the country.'' So much for the love of a good man. The proprietor brings us more wine, on the house.
Her days of being a famous face may be long gone, but the princess is still on the cutting edge, so to speak, of beauty. Besides exercising, she fasts periodically. She visits Julia Jus, a Swiss-American living in Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, who puts clients on a juice fast. The princess stays a few days or a week. ''You detoxify completely,'' she says. ''It's not a chic place. It's basic and reasonable.'' To keep her skin supple, she exfoliates with a scrubbing mitten from Morocco, and then applies Nivea cream mixed with Retin-A. Three times a day she takes cod-liver oil and evening primrose pills, to lubricate from within. For her face, she's finished with operations, but relies on Dr. Jean-Louis Sebagh, a French plastic surgeon, to keep it firm and wrinkle-free. There are injections: Botox, vitamins and fat harvested from other parts of her body. There are acid peels and a strong hormone cream. ''Natural is really for the birds,'' she says.
And natural is not the look she has achieved. The plump lips and wide eyes remind me of a de Kooning woman. The mobile mouth seems disconnected from the frozen brow.''Let's face it, miracles don't happen,'' she says, as if reading my mind. ''What counts is the spirit. To have young friends, to have a good time, not to be outdated. This is what counts.''
I look at her plate. She has eaten every last bit. In a few days she'll leave for Katmandu to attend a royal wedding. By Christmas she'll be ensconced in a palatial hotel in India. She won't be back before April or May.
I understand now that rather than being a slave to beauty, the princess has made it work for her. I revise the rank. This is not a beauty warrior. This is a general.
NR
© 2010 The Esoteric Curiosa
© 2010 The Esoteric Curiosa
