We are huge fans of Nicole Kidman, her elegant but unapologetic approach that colors every aspect of her life, and she has a sense of mischief that is brilliant. A unique style is something we love to celebrate, and we love women who are not afraid to make their own statements in their own ways.

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Photo Courtesy of British Vogue

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Luisa Casati was not born to infamy. The daughter of a rich Italian nobleman, her parents died when she was young, leaving the 15-year-old as one the country’s richest heiresses. In 1900, aged 19, she married Count Camillo Casati Stampa di Soncino and had a child, Cristina. And so it was that, up until this point, Marchesa Luisa Casati fulfilled the expectations laid out before her, living the typical life of a rich European aristocrat. It was whilst on the aristo circuit, however, that she met the Italian poet and lothario Gabriele d’Annunzio. The two became lovers, with the notoriously debauched Gabriele introducing his new muse to a whole new world, one of decadent parties and artist filled salons, of outrage, intrigue and scandalous behavior. The Marchesa never looked back.

Over the course of the next 30 years, she dedicated herself to decadence. She cultivated a dramatic look – her tall, skinny frame topped with bright red dyed hair, bleached skin, red lips and kohl rimmed eyes. She was photographed by Beaton, painted by Augustus John and Giovanni Boldini and sculpted by Jacob Epstein. A patron of the Ballet Russes, she held court at her outrageous soirées in Grecian Fortuny or a sheer sheath dress worn with nothing underneath, whilst her guests were waited on by countless servants – themselves often naked and gilded in gold leaf. Her jewels were by Lalique (she is said to have inspired Cartier’s Panther designs,) her pets were cheetahs and boa constrictors (the snake once escaped during a stay at the Ritz in Paris,) and the stories could not have been more scandalous.

This life of excess was lived out across Europe as the Marchesa flitted from Rome to Venice, Paris to London. For a while during the 1920’s, she took up residence in Capri, and it was here that we came across her, resplendent in all her eccentricity at the cliff top Villa San Michele, once the island’s most famous villa and now a much-visited museum. At KOTUR we have taken inspiration from the island in all its glittering, sun-drenched glory for our Spring Collection, and, for a time in her life, the Marchesa did too. She rented it from its owner Axel Munthe, installing herself in spite of her landlord’s frequent attempts to evict her. With its sweeping views of the town, the whitewashed villa and its lush gardens full of ancient Roman and Egyptian artifacts was the perfect spot for a woman who dealt in drama – the villa’s Egyptian granite Sphinx was a particular favorite of hers. During her time there, she transformed the place, arriving with her own band of servants and redressing the rooms to her taste. She covered the mosaic floors in animal skins and black carpets, the walls with golden curtains and dark velvet drapes. One guest was the writer Montgomery Compton Mackenzie, who recounted of a visit, “There was a golden gazelle on each side of the heavy door that was opened by a servant, clad in blue velvet tails and breeches. The Cisisbeo fluttered around the entrance hall to announce that the Marchesa was ready to receive me; we shortly would be having tea in the pergola. I continued to the drawing room and went in. Surprise is not the right word for my reaction when I saw my hostess lying on the large bearskin rug in front of the fireplace without a stitch of clothing.”

 All this excess ended up getting the better of the Marchesa in the end, who, having made her way through her fortune, died penniless in London in 1957. She was buried alongside her taxidermied Pekingese, wearing one of her beloved leopard print creations and a pair of her famously distinctive false eyelashes. Her epitaph was taken from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, reading, “’Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.‘ Her legend more than lives on. 

A Man Ray portrait of Casati dressed as Elisabeth of Austria, 1935 (Man Ray Trust by SIAE 2014)

Oscar de la Renta: The Retrospective
De Young Museum
Exhibition ends May 30th, 2016

Photo Courtesy of Huffington Post, drewaltizer.com, de Young, leighannemarie.com, borneobulletin.com.bn, wwd.com, vogue.com, wmagazine.com

Advance Style: Older and Wiser is out on the 26th of April 2016

Photo Courtesy of Powerhouse Books

Exhibition shows at the Kensington Palace
Ends 31^st December, 2016

Photo Courtesy of AP images, Getty, Rex Features, Wireimages

Countess Jacqueline de Ribes, the subject of this year’s Costume Institute Exhibition at the Met, falls firmly in this camp. Along with other fashion luminaries and all round standout dames such as Diana Vreeland and Iris Apfel, she is one of a rare breed of woman that we at Kotur look to time and time again, one of those who manages to make their own individual style statements with strength and often a small smirk, stopping us all in our tracks and setting new notions of beauty as they go.

Working in her studio, 1985.

The daughter of a count and wife of Edouard, Vicomte de Ribes, Jacqueline is a French aristocrat known for her striking beauty and trailblazing approach to glamour. Now a Great Grandmother of three, she cannot however be pigeonholed simply as an impeccably dressed Countess. Long fascinated by the world of fashion and creativity she found at her fingertips growing up in Paris, she rolled her sleeves up and immersed herself in it wherever she could – and at a time when others like her did not do the same. “I was always looking for a way to escape the cage,” she told Harpers recently. She has turned her hand to everything from television production to interior design and even wrote an anonymous column for French Marie Claire on ‘how to be chic on 2 francs,’ for a while, as well as managing the Marquis de Cuevas’s International Ballet and finally launching her own fashion label in 1982, running it until 1995.

      All this has been done against a backdrop of a life lived making the very most of the fashion on offer to her – which, it turned out, was the best of the best – as found in full evidence at the Met. For her months long skiing adventures, de Ribes had huge fox fur hats dyed to match each jacket, for the parties there was the most beautiful couture courtesy of the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino or Marc Bohan of Dior and for the real epitomy of dressing up, the fancy dress balls she frequented, there were extraordinary concoctions of dresses, each made up of customized outfits created to cause the ultimate effect.

De Ribes at Baron Alexis de Rédé’s Bal Oriental in Paris, 1969.

Of one particular occasion, when she went to dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor before Baron Alexis de Redé’s “Bal Oriental in 1969, Oscar de la Renta, a fellow guest, told Vanity Fair in 2010, “The first course, the second course, the third course, and finally dessert arrived, and still Jacqueline de Ribes had not appeared. The Duke was furious! Suddenly the dining-room doors opened, and in glided the Vicomtesse de Ribes. An exotic vision, the aristocratic beauty was swaddled from the pinnacle of her tasseled hat to the tips of her pointed slippers in a fantastically opulent Turkish disguise, ingeniously cobbled together by the Vicomtesse herself from three of her old haute couture dresses; organza lamé from a remnant market; and a sable cape, acquired from an impoverished ballerina. It was a show. And she was the star. No one knew like Jacqueline the power of an entrance.”

De Ribes with Diana Vreeland

Jacqueline de Ribes, dress by Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, July 31, 1962

De Ribes credits that other doyenne of individual chic and general KOTUR heroine Diana Vreeland as being the person who encouraged her to be brave enough to blaze her own trail. She was shot by Richard Avedon for Harpers Bazaar in 1955, and told the magazine last year that, “At that time I was not so secure. Diana did help me. She told me, ‘Jacqueline, don’t be afraid. Whatever you do, just remember: Follow your instincts and you’ll never be wrong.” And, from the huge fox fur hats to the customized couture, the baby pink ruffles to the exquisitely draped Grecian Dior, and even to the feathered headdresses, she wasn’t. There’s a style lesson in we at KOTUR love to celebrate – and that’s well worth learning.

Photo courtesy of the Met Museum, Getty Images, AP Images, AGIP/Rue des Archives/Granger, NYC, Richard Avedon, David Lees/The Life Images Collection

The Art of Style
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Exhibition ends February 21, 2016

Photo courtesy of the MET Museum

The Sands, Las Vegas

No place quite epitomizes the Rat Pack heyday more than the Sands Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas. Open from 1952 until 1996, it was their hangout of choice on the Strip – both as a hotel and as a casino – whilst it’s Copa Room saw everyone from Frank Sinatra to Sammy Davis JR and Nat King Cole perform as well as the recording of the main man’s live Sinatra at the Sands album. Décor wise the hotel was a beacon of mid century modern, complete with its iconic and huge roadside sign – still the stuff of legend. This season, we have referenced its design elements heavily, taking our cue from its opulent glamor in minaudiéres such as our Lady Luck, Lucky Dice and our Bacall Full Deck.  Bought in the 1960’s by Howard Hughes, the Sands fell into decline in the 1970’s, and was finally torn down in 1996 to make way for the Venetian, heralding the end of an era and all it represented on the Strip. In it’s day, however, it was simply the tops.

The Beverly Hills Hotel

The Rat Pack by no means discovered the Beverly Hills hotel – the ‘Pink Palace,’ had played host to the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire and John Wayne as after opening in 1912 way before they came along – but in its 1950’s heyday it became known as their LA haunt. Sinatra, Bogart, Martin and the gang – including Monroe and Bacall – were often to be found in its famous bar, the Polo Lounge. Legend has it that is was there that Lauren Bacall actually coined the term Rat Pack, having discovered her husband and his crew in situ after a long drinking session. The iconic pink building was – and still is – set in a garden resplendent with exotic palms and plants. With it’s famous Martinique banana leaf wallpaper, striped sun loungers, jewel tones and swirling signage, it was a beacon of Hollywood Regency style. This season, our Lady Luck in pink steals a little from that, whilst our Perspex inlaid minaudiéres are just the sort of glamor pusses you might choose to accompany you for your own night out at the Polo Lounge.

The Fontainebleau, Miami

The iconic curved building and palm fringed pool of Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau Hotel has starred in almost as many movies as the many celebrities that have passed through its doors over the years. Opened in 1954, it quickly became Sinatra et al’s Miami HQ, it’s La Ronde nightclub a favorite destination for an evening jaunt. Sinatra visited so much so that the hotel started a special, “Cocktails and Breakfast with Frankie,” promotion when he was in town, giving guests the option of a cocktail fuelled meet and greet with the man himself of a morning. Steeped in Art Deco golden glamor, the hotel came to represent that particularly decadent, deco style approach that was de rigeur back then. With its chequerboard floors, huge chandeliers and sweeping staircases, the Fontainbleau more than reflected the most luxurious design of its era. Our geometric Fitzgerald and Merrick minaudiéres take those famous deco motifs and reimagine them for now, giving a little bit of that golden era glamour we all can always do with a sprinkling of.

1:  The Sands Hotel, Las Vegas
2. KOTUR Lady Luck clutch
3: The Rat Pack, Sands Hotel, Las Vegas
4: Sands Hotel Copa Room, Vegas
5. Lucky Dice Clutch
6: Beverly Hills Hotel
7: Laura Bacall at the pool in Beverly Hills Hotel
8: Marilyn Monroe at the Beverly Hills Hotel
9: The Polo Lounge
10. The Fontainebleau, Miami
11. Interior of The Fountainebleau
12. geometric Fitzgerald Clutch
13.  Frank Sinatra on the Boardwalk of the Fontainebleau

Photo Courtesy of fontainebleu.com, dorchestercollection.com, AP Photo, ralphlauren.com, Terry O’Neil 1968

Evoking more than a little of the dining clubs this set so liked to frequent by night, glamorous Hollywood Regency homes were often found to have statement monochrome floors in them. A major proponent of this was Dorothy Draper, regularly named the first professional interior designer in America and the woman responsible for outstanding deco-inspired projects such as the Carlyle and the Fairmont. Her most famous commission, that of completely revamping the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia after its use in WW2 as a military hospital, proves the epitome of her look.  Dramatic prints, colorful chintzes, glossy finishes and a chequerboard floor all play a part in its famous staircase, a benchmark for the “Modern Baroque” style that Draper invented.

Photo Courtesy of Museum of the City New York, Tony Duquette