Adorable Story #161: Mona Bismarck

“You must never be careless.”

— Mona Bismarck

Born in Kentucky and later moving through the grand salons of Paris and New York, she navigated the twentieth century at its highest altitudes of wealth, fashion, and power. Designers dressed her, photographers immortalized her, and society watched her.

In this issue, we explore the ascent and multiple reinventions of a woman who transformed herself into an icon of twentieth century glamour.

Table of Contents: Early Years / Education / Career / Strategy Behind Marriages / Capri / Paris / Salvador Dalí / Personal Life / Bismarck Sapphire Necklace / Philanthropy / Later Years / Did you know?

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Mona Bismarck was born Edmona Travis Strader on February 5th, 1897, in Louisville, Kentucky.

She would be later known across Europe as Countess Mona von Bismarck, but she began life in circumstances (very) far from any aristocratic circles.

Her father, Robert Sims Strader, was a horse breeder and trainer, while her mother, Bird O’Shockeny Strader, separated from her husband when Mona was still a child, in 1902.

Mona and her brother were subsequently raised by their paternal grandmother in Kentucky.

The rupture between her parents marked her early life with instability, but not deprivation: her father’s job as a horse breeder and his involvement with racing circles provided her with a relatively comfortable life.

She grew up in Liberty Heights, outside Louisville.

Albeit there is no record of a formal university education, Mona’s schooling appears to have been conventional for a young woman of her social standing in Kentucky at the turn of the century.

If she lacked academic laurels, she possessed something far more valuable in the society she would later dominate: instinct.

Mona Bismarck did not build a conventional career. She built an image, secured marriages and eventually turned that into capital.

Her first marriage, to Henry J. Schlesinger in 1917, provided financial security.

Schlesinger was 18 years her senior and owned Fairland Farm in Lexington, where her father had worked. The marriage produced one child, Robert Henry Schlesinger, before ending in divorce just three years later, in 1920.

According to contemporary accounts, Mona relinquished custody of her son in exchange for a financial settlement of USD 500,000 (a vast sum at the time: approximately in the region of USD 10m in today’s value).