Who was the world’s best-dressed socialite? A KY-born woman claimed the crown

Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history - some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.

Feb. 5, 1897: The American socialite, “Best Dressed Woman in the World” and philanthropist Countess Mona von Bismarck-Schönhausen, also known as Mona Bismarck, is born.

Mona Bismarck was born Mona Strader in Louisville. When her parents divorced in 1902, Mona and her brother were raised by their grandparents. When she was just 17, she married Henry Schlesinger, 18 years her senior and owner of Fairland Farm in Lexington, where her father was a professional horse trainer.

The two eventually moved from the farm in Lexington to Milwaukee where Schlesinger’s iron business was. In the three years they were married, she had a son, Robert Henry, but when they divorced in 1920, Mona paid Schlesinger $500,000 to take custody of the child.

The next year, she married James Irving Bush, a banker said to be the “handsomest man in America” who was only 14 years older than her. They divorced in Paris in 1925.

The year after that, Mona married Harrison Williams, one of the wealthiest men in America, having amassed a $680 million fortune (about $12.5 billion in today’s dollars). He was 53; she was 29. Aboard his 250-foot-yacht, the couple spent their yearlong honeymoon traveling around the world.

During a stop in Sri Lanka, Williams bought Mona a beautiful, cornflower blue sapphire. Cut and set by Cartier, the 98.57 carat cushion-cut gem, known as the Bismarck Sapphire, is considered to be one of the finest examples of sapphires in the world.

The stock market crash of 1929 wiped out most of Williams’ fortune, leaving the couple with a measly $5 million (about the equivalent of $92 million today), enough to continue their lavish lifestyle. His money, and her looks and style, kept them in the public eye.

Not only did designers like Chanel, Molyneux, Lanvin and others consider her the Best Dressed Woman in the World, even Cole Porter included her in the lyrics for one of his songs, “What do I care if Mrs. Harrison Williams is the best dressed woman in town?”

Ethel Merman sang Porter’s musical “Ridin’ High.”

When Williams died in 1955, Mona was left with a staggering fortune. Two years later, she married her interior designer and “secretary” Count Albrecht Edzard Heinrich Karl von Bismarck-Schönhausen, grandson of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

They settled down for a life of luxury in an apartment in the Hotel Lambert in Paris, as well as in her Italian villa on the island of Capri.

When Albrecht died in 1970, she married his doctor, Umberto de Martini. This husband was 14 years younger than her, and she paid Italy’s King Umberto II to make him a count. When he accidentally drove his Alfa Romeo off the road in Naples, (her socialite friends called the incident “Martini on the Rocks”), she found out he had married her for her money and had been using her fortune to support his other family in England.

Alone, her eyesight failing and her beauty fading, she spent the final years of her life in Paris and Capri.

In 1976, she donated her papers to the Filson Historical Society, and several unique pieces of jewelry, including her necklace, the Bismarck Sapphire, to the Smithsonian.

Mona von Bismarck died in 1983 at the age of 86. She was buried on Long Island and her fortune was used to establish the Mona Bismarck Foundation, which funded the Mona Bismarck American Center in Paris, which ultimately became the American Library in Paris in 2022.

The Bismarck Sapphire is still on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s hall of geology, gems and minerals.

This story was originally published February 5, 2025 at 4:00 AM.