Bunny Mellon: the woman Victoria Beckham wants to be

Lisa Armstrong looks to philanthropist and garden designer Bunny Mellon and interior designer Rose Uniacke to find out what it really means to have impeccable taste

BY Lisa Armstrong | 14 November 2014

The only flashy act Bunny Mellon ever committed was posthumously, four days ago, when part of her estate sold at Sotheby's in New York for $158. 7 million. Note I said part. The two Rothkos have gone, but the remaining lots, consisting of more jewellery, paintings and furniture, will auction on the November 20 and 21. Mrs Mellon, who died in March aged 103, owned rather a lot of "stuff" - some 5,000 items, according to Elaine Whitmore, vice chairman, head of single owner sales at Sotheby's New York, whose absorbing task it was last summer to catalogue them all.

It's not merely dazzling amounts of fancy "stuff" that entices discerning collectors out on a Monday night in November. Bunny, or Rachel Lowe Lambert as she was christened - she was the granddaughter of Jordan Lambert, the inventor of Listerine - "had an impeccable eye for everything", according to Whitmore. Her best friend was Hubert de Givenchy, a man not known for merciful judgments when it came to matters of style. Her protg was Jacqueline Kennedy, who once lamented to Bunny: "I love your house, but hate mine. Can you help me?"

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Bunny could and did. Jackie's redecoration of the White House (and overhaul of the Rose Garden there) was widely perceived to be a turning point for sceptical Americans, who had hitherto suspected the First Lady was little more than a particularly fine clothes horse.

The Bunny Mellons of this world - women who could oversee an exquisite garden with the same adroitness as they could assemble a wardrobe of flawless clothes - were of a generation that, as Whitmore says, valued "elegance and discretion".

Monumentally privileged, for valid social reasons, the grand hostesses of Mellon's time were superseded by other role models, some of whom have turned out to be disappointingly vacuous. "Muses" often professional or semi-professional models and mainly notable for their flare with "statement" clothes and willingness to turn up at shop openings, were, for a long time, the replacement to the grand hostess.

Mrs. Mellon's main residence at Oak Spring Farms, Upperville, Virginia

We rarely saw a muse's home, let alone her garden. Her taste in food? The implication often is that she probably had better things to do than eat. Their chief occupation was to promote the products of whichever designer hired them. No wonder so many muses prefer not to be described as such - their circumscribed role of wafting around looking good but seeming remote is not only increasingly at odds with the busy-ness to which we must all ascribe nowadays, but looks threadbare even compared with the achievements of the grand hostesses. Bunny for instance, in addition to running homes in Virginia, New York, Paris, Nantucket, Antigua was a serious horticulturist and fund-raiser. "This wasn't a woman who just sat around," says Whitmore. "She was very organised and an energetic philanthropist. If she'd been born 50 years later she'd be the CEO of a major company."

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Bunny Mellon: the woman Victoria Beckham wants to be