Nouveau riche
The Dichotomy Between Old and New Money
“All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes” — Christina Stead
In the mid-nineteen-eighties, the contents of the thirty-room seven-story New York townhouse once belonging to Pop culture icon, convicted criminal, and former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos (b. 1929) were auctioned off by the newly-installed government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (b. 1947). Amongst the “mixed bag” of furniture and object d’art — including decorative trees made from shells, sets of monogrammed silk sheets, and ten-foot-tall idealised portraits of the Marcoses and the Reagans — were needlepoint pillows embroidered with “To be rich is no longer a sin it’s a miracle” and “Nouveau riche is better than no riche at all”. Known as the “Steel Butterfly” on account of her authoritarian manner and extreme glamour (something of a cross between Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011) and Liz Taylor (1932-2011)), Imelda’s excessive and gaudy lifestyle has become an emblem for the billions of dollars her late husband and dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1917-1989) stole from the people during two-and-a-half decades of martial rule. As the country spiralled further and further into debt and poverty, Imelda, seemingly oblivious to growing civil unrest, ordered the construction of numerous grandiose self-glorifying architectural projects, “in impossibly short order”, with the self-professed intention that the impoverished could have beauty in their lives too (indeed her infrastructure-building-spree was so utterly extreme that in the late-nineteen-seventies the term “edifice complex” was coined to describe her use of publicly funded construction projects as political and election propaganda). American artist Lauren Greenfield (b. 1966) who produced a critically acclaimed documentary on the Marcoses, has proffered her own unique opinion as to the motivation behind Imelda’s non-stop spending: “It wasn’t wealth for materialism or showing off, it was wealth for power and admiration. She loves the people loving her.” (Of course whether or not Greenfield, a renowned chronicler of the morally deformed, can be considered a reliable narrator is purely a matter for conjecture.)
Aside from a slew of peculiar building projects, including the Manilla Film Center, which was inspired, naturally, by the Parthenon in Athens (allegedly “cursed” as a result of the 168 workers tragically entombed in quick-drying cement after a scaffold collapsed during construction), were also the former First Lady’s lesser-known and considerably more bizarre extravagances; for e.g. after an African safari in 1976, Imelda expressed her intention to create a wildlife sanctuary, which was, in reality, nothing more than a private game reserve for her children. A veritable Noah’s Ark of African animals — giraffes, zebra, impala, wild boar, gazelles, and waterbuck — were captured, packed into boxes, and imported illegally into the Philippines. Quite literally lacking anywhere in the country to put them, Imelda identified the reef-fringed island of Calauit, a 14-square-mile stretch of land in the South China Sea, on which to create her own personal piece of Kenya; so as to make room for the animals the island’s 524 indigenous families were unceremoniously shipped off to a former leper colony in the United States. When in 1986 the Filipino people revolted and stormed the Malacanang Palace, it was famously discovered that Imelda had left behind more than 2,700 pairs of shoes, 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags, gallons of French perfume, and most interestingly perhaps, a collection of bulletproof bras. Seemingly lacking any scruples when subsequently interviewed by CNN the former First Lady exclaimed, “They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes,” adding, as an indication of the extent to which power begets self-delusion, “They will use ‘Imeldific’ to mean ostentatious extravagance.” Marcos has frequently been referred to as a modern-day Marie-Antoinette, extravagance incarnate; a moniker which, one can only presume, the much-maligned French Queen, known for her refined good taste, would have been utterly appalled by.
Secrétaire à cylindre (1786) in mother of pearl, gilt bronze and silver, made by Jean-Henri Riesener for Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir at Fontainebleau.
A portrait of Marie Thérèse of France by Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835) painted in 1816, wearing Marie-Antoinette’s diamond bracelets
Indeed despite her profligacy contributing to the downfall of the French monarchy, two centuries after the revolution, people are still besotted by Queen Marie-Antoinette’s personal possessions; for e.g. at a recent sale at Christie’s in Geneva two diamond bracelets worn by the eighteenth-century châtelaine of Versailles were sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for 7.46m Swiss francs (£7.04m), more than double the pre-sale estimate. These extraordinary bracelets, with approximately 140 to 150 carats of diamonds, each composed of three strings of stones and a large barrette clasp (which can be linked and worn as a necklace), were bought by the ill-fated French Queen in 1776 for the astronomical sum of 250,000 livres — estimated as equivalent to around $4.6 million in today’s money. “They are so light and so well made that they simply flow on your wrist like fabric,” says Jean-Marc Lunel, senior international specialist in the Jewellery department at Christie’s Geneva. So extravagant was the purchase, that to pay for the bracelets the young queen was forced to sell gemstones from her own personal collection and to borrow 29,000 livres (around $533,000 today) from her husband King Louis XVI (1754-1793). Even her own mother Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (1717-1780), wrote to the young queen, castigating her for such reckless spending. In January 1791, while imprisoned at the Tuileries Palace, Marie-Antoinette carefully wrapped the jewels in cotton and stashed them away in a wooden chest, managing to smuggle them out of the country before she was guillotined in 1793. A few months after her death they were passed on to her only surviving daughter, Marie Thérèse Charlotte of France, Madame Royale, later Duchess of Angoulême (1778-1851) and then the Duchess of Parma (1819-1864), where they remained within her family for more than 200 years. “These bracelets travelled through time to recount a most important era of French history, with its glamour, glory and drama”, enthuses Francois Curiel, Europe chairman for Christie’s auction house. Such is the fervour and fascination for the queen’s personal possessions that in November last year a single silk slipper sold for €44,000, and similarly a travel bag went for €43,000, five times the pre-sale estimate.
A voracious and obsessive collector, Marie-Antoinette would become the most famous French queen of all time, her name synonymous with glamour and style. Born into the Holy Roman Empire, from an early age she was taught the French language and literature, and given lessons in music and art. Yet on her marriage to the King’s grandson in 1770, it was, for all intents and purposes, a proverbial baptism of fire, as the 14-year-old dauphine was introduced to an entirely new world of taste, luxury and artistic sophistication. By comparison, the Austrian royal household in which she had been raised would have seemed hopelessly provincial in terms of aesthetic sensibility. By the 1780s when Marie-Antoinette had become queen, she was spending enormous sums of money on commissioning furniture and works of art; though what was remarkable, was not necessary the extravagance of her lifestyle, but the finesse and refinement she displayed in employing the most avant-garde artists and craftsmen of her time, for e.g. the extraordinary Bureau à cylindre (roll top desk) in gilt bronze, silver and mother of pearl, made by the Queen’s favourite cabinetmaker Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) in 1786 for the Boudoir de la Reine (also known as the “silver room”) at Fontainebleau; or a suite of eight side chairs and eight armchairs made by François Toussaint Foliot (1748-1839), after a design by Jacques Gondoin (1737-1818), in 1780 for one of Marie Antoinette’s most personal retreats, the Pavillon du Belvédère in the “Jardin Anglais” of the Petit Trianon (Used as a sitting room during the summer months, all of the chairs had elegantly curved backrests so as to hug the walls of this exquisitely feminine and flower-festooned circular folly); known to have cost 20,000 livres, it was the most expensive suite of seat furniture ever supplied to the queen. Par for the course Marie-Antoinette requested furniture to be “in the very latest taste” and so as to avoid any expensive mistakes, Gondoin had first presented her with various options in the form of a three-dimensional model in red wax, each leg and arm of which took a different form. (Given only a single chair from the suite still remains, it’s somewhat miraculous that the model has survived intact, and is on display in the Louvre’s decorative arts galleries).
The interior of Donal Trump’s New York penthouse, apparently modelled, at least according to the former President, on the Palace of Versailles, photograph by Sam Horine/R29
Quickly disillusioned by the formalities of the French court, Marie-Antoinette commissioned the Hameau de la Reine (“The Queen’s Hamlet”), a rustic retreat in the grounds of the Château de Versailles — where she would play at being a shepherdess or peasant, and similarly, a decorative “dairy” at Rambouillet, replete with Sèvres porcelain milk pails decorated in a faux bois design, meant to emulate real wood grain (presumably the real thing would have been far too barbaric a reminder of real life); the latter of which the cosseted young queen would visit only once in June 1787, repulsed by the gothic architecture of the neighbouring chateau, which she felt spoiled the illusion (seemingly she and Marcos shared a similar affinity for grandiose escapism, albeit the French queen exercised a far greater degree of taste and sophistication in putting her fantasies into reality). One attribute unique to Marie-Antoinette was that she was the only queen to influence the French Court with her own personal taste — and more accurately speaking the “Louis XVI style” should be known as the “Marie-Antoinette style”, which was reflective of her penchant for pastoral and Antique motifs, and for elegant geometric lines. As with Marcos, the young queen quickly became unpopular as a result of her foolhardy and voracious spending, but it was the Affaire du collier de la reine (“the Affair of the Queen’s Necklace”) — in which she was wrongly accused of participating in a conspiracy to defraud the Crown jewellers by acquiring a 2,000,000 livres (approximately US$15.1 million in 2021) diamond necklace and then refusing to pay for it — which proved the straw that broke the camel’s back, and ultimately gave moral weight and popular support for the French Revolution.
Today, despite her reputation for fashionable excess, Marie-Antoinette is thought of in terms of a patron of the arts, supporting a raft of painters, sculptors and artisans, including the female painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), whose successful career as an artist owes much to the queen’s unfettered support. Whereas in stark contrast Marcos is considered to be the very personification of the vulgarity and garishness of “new money”, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “wealth that has been recently acquired, typically that which a person has earned rather than inherited”, such that individuals in that category are “perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy”. Of course, very many stereotypes exist because there is some element of truth to them, and I’m sure we can all think of numerous celebrities, for e.g. footballers, singers, actors and reality TV stars etc. whose sprawling McMansions — veritable temples to gaudy excess — have been assembled with the sole ambition of announcing their wealth with a loud hailer; every available surface decked out in gleaming white marble, ceilings heaving under the weight of crystal chandeliers. The New York penthouse of reality TV star and former President Donald “MAGA” Trump (b. 1946) and his wife, Melania, is perhaps the epitome of such over-the-top, tasteless “luxury”. Occupying the top three floors of the eponymous Trump Tower, its decoration was apparently conceived so as to emulate the lavish interiors of Queen Marie-Antoinette (presumably from the perspective of someone with little or no knowledge of eighteenth-century French architecture … who hasn’t even seen so much as a photograph of the Palace of Versailles). “Some people consider it to be the greatest apartment in the world,” Trump said with typical modesty to a host of contestants on an episode of The Apprentice, “I would never ever say that myself but it's certainly a nice apartment.” What exactly the French Queen would have thought of the former President’s 24-carat gold diamond-studded front door, frescoed ceilings, canopy beds and colossal chandeliers is purely a matter of speculation, but I think it’s safe to say she wouldn’t be asking for decorating tips (though in all fairness, in it’s former Ivana-Trump-curated-incarnation, the apartments Angelo Donghia (1935-1985) designed onyx-and-smoked-mirror-clad interiors at least had some camp-high-octane-master-of-the-universe-style about them).
An interior decorated by Dorothy “Sister” Parish and Albert Hadley, photograph by Horst P. Horst, the sort of interior designers working for the twentieth centuries newly minted haute bourgeoisie
Of course, as the maxim goes, all that glitters is not gold, and every dictator is largely dependant on the skills of their interior designer when it comes to executing a well-conceived interior scheme. Indeed the derogatory distinction between “old” and “new” money in terms of taste and sophistication might rest largely on the inherent skill of contemporary craftsman — for e.g. when Marie-Antoinette pursued the very latest fashions she employed the likes of Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené (1748–1803), Louis-François Chatard (1749–1819) and Riesener, the latter of which essentially established his own design language, satisfying demands for magnificence and sumptuous display, whilst also incorporating motifs and decoration that appealed to the personal tastes of the court; similarly, in the nineteenth century, the newly minted haute bourgeoisie employed designers such as Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941), Marc du Plantier (1901-1975), Billy Baldwin (1903-1983) and Parish-Hadley who effectively furnished their patrons with the requisite “good taste” necessary to pass in the rarified stratosphere of high society. It is of course important to remember that up until at least the mid-twentieth century the rules of architecture, fashion and interiors were far more prescriptive, including rules regarding etiquette and how one should behave.
In terms of contemporary interiors, such barriers have been broken down and there’s far less of an expectation that one should comply with normative ideals of what a well-appointed interior should look like or, for that matter, to employ the services of a professional designer (many of whom, in any event, have received very little in terms of formal training and are merely products of PR-placement). However, when going it alone, the likes of Fendi Casa and Roberto Cavalli Home don’t quite have such style and panache as French decorators Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933) and Eugène Printz (1889-1948). Still, when one considers what might seem the excessive “baubles” of the international super-rich, is a gold Rolls-Royce Phantom any different in terms of ostentation and conspicuous wealth than the gilt-wood carriages of numerous European royal families? And for that matter, can a “blinged up” mega-yacht justifiably be seen as any different to the now mythical “Christina O”, a former warship bought by billionaire Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis in 1954 and converted into a private motor yacht? (Whose highlights included bar stools upholstered in whales’ foreskin and a swimming pool with a Minoan mosaic). It’s the twenty-first century, yet people still seem illogically in awe of the “aristocracy” and “royal family”, with the resulting assumption that “old money” good, “new money” bad, at least in terms of taste and sophistication. For a good many years even the Rothschild’s were considered “nouveau riche” and faced considerable resistance from the established “gentry” when they tried to make it big; upon moving to the UK they weren’t even allowed to join the local hunt, and so started their own, building bigger and flashier houses to show everyone they had more money than their neighbours, or, as Hannah Rothschild puts it “My tower is bigger than yours”. In an age of “influencers” and reality TV stars, showing off their newly acquired wealth to legions of Instagram followers, it might be worth remembering the words of American critic Mary McCarththy (1912-1989): “Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.”