Throughout the 1930s, Elsie had organized a succession of dinner dances, bals masqués, themed parties. She was credited with inventing murder-mystery parties and, occasionally, she gave small parties for about forty close friends. As she entered her ninth decade her energy seemed undimmed. She still worked at her diet as well as her daily exercises and was so well known for her handstands that Cole Porter immortalized her in his song ‘Anything Goes’. As Wallis Simpson, her friend and admirer, said of her: ‘She mixes people like a cocktail – and the result is sheer genius.’
For the previous year Elsie had been planning the most spectacular ball yet. Ever since the previous summer when she had thrown an extravagant circus ball featuring acrobats, she had determined that next time she would outdo herself by repeating the theme but with elephants as well as clowns, tightrope-walkers and jugglers. She may have been inspired by a visit to India, or perhaps she even remembered an occasion thirty years before when she had seen elephants walking sedately through Boston. Whatever the inspiration, she knew that the elephants would create an incomparable social buzz. However precarious the world situation, she was not going to abandon her plans for an unforgettable night of entertainment.
It was a balmy evening on 1 July 1939 when shortly after 9 p.m. the chauffeur-driven Mercedes and Rolls-Royces and numerous taxis began disgorging the 700 or so guests at the Boulevard Saint-Antoine entrance to the Petit Trianon. Although the men in their elegant white tie and tails may have felt the heat, most of the women, in outfits designed by Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin and Lucien Lelong, needed cloaks or jackets before the party was over at dawn.
Elsie herself draped a long, shocking-pink cape over her shoulders. Beneath the cape she wore a magnificent ivory silk gown emblazoned with silver sequins and jewelled butterflies designed by her favourite couturier, Mainbocher, who was now basking in international fame as the designer of the pale blue wedding gown worn by Wallis Simpson for her marriage to the recently abdicated Duke of Windsor. It was Elsie who had effected the introduction to the couturier. Although she was small in stature Elsie cut a striking figure as a circus ringleader with a diamond and aquamarine Cartier tiara in her hair. Brandishing a whip ‘as if to defy the fates’, she walked bravely between the legs of the elephants before leading eight white ponies and dogs through their paces in a circus ring laid out on the lawn. In addition, she had hired a blind strolling accordion player, a Hawaiian guitarist who floated on a boat in the swimming pool and three orchestras in rotation playing in the dance pavilion. In one part of the gardens she had placed a champagne bar in a small circular tent with a striped roof set up around a fat tree trunk; not far away was a hot buffet which stayed open until 5 a.m., serving (unusually for Elsie who did not place much store by offering food to her guests) lamb chops, scrambled eggs, cakes and even more champagne.
In social terms, the surreal occasion was considered a triumph. Everyone talked about the magnificence of the gardens with their unusual topiary as much as they praised the originality of the entertainments – although some complained about the inevitable smell given off by the animals and about their need regularly to relieve themselves, a detail left out by Vogue and others in their coverage of the spectacular event. The magazines were no more interested in the guests – aristocrats, diplomats, dukes, duchesses, princesses, writers, designers and artists, many of whom will reappear in the following pages – describing the clothes they wore and the jewels adorning their gowns. One of the most beautiful was a stunning Brazilian woman, Aimée de Sotomayor, widely considered one of the most glamorous women of the twentieth century, whose smiling photograph from that night appeared in Vogue a month later. With gardenias strewn in her blonde hair, she was wearing one of the first dresses designed by the then little-known Christian Dior, albeit not yet under his own name label. Christian Dior himself was, according to Aimée, ‘a little sad’ not to have been invited. However, Aimée’s style made a big impression on one of the other guests, the textile magnate Marcel Boussac. After the war, Boussac was to finance Christian Dior in creating his own label and design house.
Few among le tout Paris were concerned that night with what was going on in the rest of Europe because they believed that France would not be seriously affected, or at any rate not for long. Surely the seemingly impregnable Maginot Line, a series of concrete fortifications along the border with Germany, would protect the country? Throughout the spring and early summer the social season had continued as normal; in fact there was a sense of recklessness in the determination to celebrate which none in this high-society group considered excessive or out of place.