Fascinated by her aristocratic heritage, colorful life and influence in the fashion and art worlds, Foulkes in 2019 penned the book “Ira: The Life and Times of a Princess” on her life growing up in Venice, her fairytale wedding in Venice to Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe at 15 years old, her glamorous travels and fashion magazine shoots, and her glitzy Place Vendôme apartment post-divorce.
“The awareness about her in a world that was pre-Internet was quite astonishing. The volume of newspaper cuttings I went through was quite extraordinary,” Foulkes quoted at the time.
She was the daughter of Clara Agnelli, who was the sister of Fiat heir Gianni Agnelli. Von Fürstenberg’s father, Prince Tassilo von Fürstenberg, was the son of a Hungarian countess and a prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and her maternal grandmother was Princess Virginia San Faustino, an American.
When her marriage to Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe, the jetsetting playboy who turned the sleepy fishing village of Marbella into a glamorous resort in the 1950s, was over – creating a major scandal at the time as she was also accused of adultery – von Fürstenberg married the Brazilian playboy-industrialist Francisco Matarazzo “Baby” Pignatari, 23 years her senior, in Reno, Nevada in 1961, but that ended in a divorce as well – in Las Vegas after three years.
In his biography, Foulkes recounted her struggles with motherhood and marriage and the tragedy in 2006 of losing her son Christoph in a prison in Bangkok, aged 50, accused of having counterfeited a visa to enter the country to save time. Her other son, Hubertus, became a ski Olympian for Mexico.
“She’s got this rebellious streak and was a very independent woman at a time where it was still a very masculine world. She took a lot of decisions that were considered brave in those days,” writes Foulkes.
She defied conventions as an adolescent model for Emilio Pucci, occasionally walking the runways and posing for Helmut Newton and Cecil Beaton. “Ira was a great family friend and knew my father since she was 14 years old,” said Emilio’s daughter Laudomia Pucci.
Von Fürstenberg was a couture client, Diana Vreeland’s darling, and championed Karl Lagerfeld during the early stages in his career. She became a P.R. for Valentino and was rumored to become Prince Rainier of Monaco’s second wife after the death of Grace Kelly.
“I’ve known Ira forever, we even worked together on my first perfume,” said Valentino Garavani. “Beautiful and always smiling, Ira possessed an unwavering passion for everything she did set her mind to. Whether it was her work, her hobbies, or her personal pursuits, she approached each endeavor with wholehearted enthusiasm and dedication.”
She pursued an acting career under the aegis of the famous producer Dino di Laurentiis, racking up around 30 movies in the late 1960s and ‘70 and over the years, she collected art by Roy Lichtenstein, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Josef Albers and Yves Klein.
Traveling around the world, spending her life between Paris, Biarritz and London, after abandoning acting, she started designing home décor objects, many of them combined with gems and semiprecious stones. She made more than 800 one-of-a-kind pieces, each signed and numbered — vases, boxes, Indian jeweled handmirrors, picture frames, bookends, animal figurines and trays, for example, which made it into the New York’s Chinese Porcelain Company and the Thyssen Museum.
She said she began designing when she couldn’t find a gift she liked for her friends Anne and Kirk Douglas, so she decided to make one. Among her several charity initiatives, she was a patron of the Children of Africa Foundation.
Von Fürstenberg was a couture client, Diana Vreeland’s darling, and championed Karl Lagerfeld during the early stages in his career. She became a P.R. for Valentino and was rumored to become Prince Rainier of Monaco’s second wife after the death of Grace Kelly.
“I’ve known Ira forever, we even worked together on my first perfume,” said Valentino Garavani. “Beautiful and always smiling, Ira possessed an unwavering passion for everything she did set her mind to. Whether it was her work, her hobbies, or her personal pursuits, she approached each endeavor with wholehearted enthusiasm and dedication.”
She pursued an acting career under the aegis of the famous producer Dino di Laurentiis, racking up around 30 movies in the late 1960s and ‘70 and over the years, she collected art by Roy Lichtenstein, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Josef Albers and Yves Klein.
Traveling around the world, spending her life between Paris, Biarritz and London, after abandoning acting, she started designing home décor objects, many of them combined with gems and semiprecious stones. She made more than 800 one-of-a-kind pieces, each signed and numbered — vases, boxes, Indian jeweled handmirrors, picture frames, bookends, animal figurines and trays, for example, which made it into the New York’s Chinese Porcelain Company and the Thyssen Museum.
She said she began designing when she couldn’t find a gift she liked for her friends Anne and Kirk Douglas, so she decided to make one. Among her several charity initiatives, she was a patron of the Children of Africa Foundation.
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