Deeda Blair

She's known for her style, particularly dining, tabletop and entertaining. Her aesthetic is just slightly too cold for my taste.

Her daughter, Selma, is not doing so well.

Here's their house on Foxhall Road in DC.

I don’t know anything about her, but it’s nice to see a glimpse into another age. Where a woman who collected haute couture garments wonders than no one gets dressed any more.

More press from 2022

I love the hair and outfit in OPs pic. Gorgeous.

Why is she perched on an end table?

Louis XVI chair, you plebeian.

Love her.

She's a bitch.

Would it kill her to smile for the photo?

Maybe.

She made out like a bandit for a little gal who never got past junior college.

Husband's dad was a banker. Husband grew up here.

Was also a McCormick descendent AKA International Harvester Co.

Huge estate in Lake Forrest.

Holy cow that WWD take down is dishy:

A family scrapbook of the Blairs’ charmed life includes a printout of an e-mail from a British admirer reporting on an uncharacteristically gushy letter purportedly published in a collection of letters written by the celebrated British intellectual and wit Nancy Mitford. Charlotte Mosley, the official editor of Mitford’s letters, contacted about the reference to Mitford marveling over the elegance of a certain American woman traveling on Charles Wrightsman’s yacht, reports there is no such letter in the collection. Instead, she received permission from the Duchess of Devonshire, Mitford’s sister “Debo,” and the executor of her letters, to share the contents of the unpublished letter, which paints a very different picture.

Mitford — not exactly a fan of Americans, as her letters to Evelyn Waugh demonstrate — writes about “a particularly ghastly Mrs. Blair,” whom she met in July 1967 when she was staying in Venice with Anna Maria Cicogna, along with fellow houseguest J. Carter Brown, the late director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Blair tells her about a recent visit to Chatsworth, the home of the Duchess of Devonshire. “I said, Pity Debo wasn’t there,” Mitford writes. “She said, in strong American dialect I can’t write so will translate, it was a mercy because we didn’t have to be polite, we could concentrate on the art. I furiously told Carter (staying here) this piece of effrontery & he said My dear, Americans don’t spend their time reading Debrett; she can’t have known you were sisters. Still, I said ‘Debo’ so she must have known I was a great friend. Quelle insolente.’’

Mitford’s comments aside, others also aren’t fans of the Blair touch. “Deeda’s charm is the charm of a dinner party,” says one Lasker Foundation insider. “She’s good at putting people together, but she gives the illusion of being conspiratorial.”

She’s a bit of a throwback (and last of) International socialites. She’s smart, wealthy and, has taste and discipline. She’s from a time before stylists and professional party planners- of private dinners managed by a hostess with ample staff (cook, etc).

Love her Paulie Walnuts stripes.

That photo looks like an elegant advertisement describing the heartbreak of hemorrhoids.

I was going to type “I don’t know why I like her but I do,” but then charlie posted r16 and he said it all.