(8 of 9)
Spain's Costa Brava, In five years ago, is Out now, though the Costa del Sol is still O.K. Out are St.-Tropez and Jamaica. In are Barbados, the Greek islands, and Sardinia, where the Aga Khan (very In) is building a resort. Southampton is In; Newport is coming back In fast, partly because of the Kennedys, who were married there at Jackie's mother's shorefront house.
Among Manhattan restaurants, Le Pavilion is Out, the Côte Basque, Colony and Caravelle are In; "21" hasn't been In for years. After the 15th of June, the right thing is to slip over to Venice for a couple of weeks. There, of course, it would be best to have one's own palazzo—President Kennedy's friends, the Charles Wrights-mans, do. Countess Natalie Volpi's pied a terre is a good example of style in Venice. The countess usually spends about a fortnight there in June; then off to Rome and other In spots until September, when Venice is Right again, for a while. Tethered outside when she is in residence is her silver-trimmed gondola, and four luxuriously appointed motorboats. The artist who designed the villa's furniture was paid an extra sum, equal to the royalties he would get for a given number of years from selling the designs commercially.
When the time limit is up, the countess will have some new furniture designed. The Most with the Money. Continental Europe, home of the lightly taxed rich, does not yet know the Society P.R. Man or the charity ball; old-line aristocracies stage their own parties, and the climbing offers fewer hand and toe holds than in the U.S. In Rome, Count Aspreno Colonna gives an annual reception in his palazzo, whose splendors no U.S. citizen could match. Queen Elizabeth II once told the count: "After seeing your palace, I feel quite reluctant to invite you to Buckingham."
French aristocrats, such as Prince Michel de Bourbon de Panne and Comte Jean de Beaumont, father of one of the International Set's standout beauties, Vi-comtesse Jacqueline de Ribes, set the pace for French elegance. One of the biggest wigs among the bourgeois is Paul-Louis Weiller, who has some 15 houses, which he very generously lends.
Britain's aristocracy, heavily taxed and kept in its place by the democratic practice of conferring titles on union leaders, newspaper owners and even photographers, has never been highly exclusive, and for the most part amiably accepts the swirling new International Set. And despite death duties, a duke can still manage quite a bash, as witness this week's party in Blenheim Palace.
Ultimately, the "leaders" of the International Set are those with money who do the most with it. Among the most conspicuous: Baroness Heinrich von Thyssen (nee Fiona Campbell-Walter); Rosita Winston, one of the world's best-dressed women and a part Cherokee Indian; Donna Marella Agnelli of Turin, whose husband's grandfather founded the Fiat automobile company; Rosie Warburton Gaynor Chisholm, whose grandparents were Old Guard Philadelphians, and whose mother married William K. Vanderbilt.