THOSE DAZZLING DEVONSHIRES…

As a new exhibition celebrates five centuries of the aristocratic clans’ style at Chatsworth House, we salute its standout fashionistas

GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE Born in 1757, Lady Georgiana Spencer (Princess Diana’s great-great-great-great aunt) married the 5th Duke of Devonshire on her 17th birthday, 1774. Dubbed ‘the Empress of Fashion’ by the great man of letters Horace Walpole, and painted by Gainsborough and Reynolds, Georgiana became the unassailable style leader of Georgian England. An ardent shopper and arbiter of taste, she was always first to get all the latest Paris fashions and had the biggest hair and feathers. Wowing Marie Antoinette and the French court at Versailles with a white hat trimmed with feathers caught up at the sides with pink roses. After her visit the chapeau à la Devonshire became a fashion craze in France in the 1780s. A buff and blue riding habit, considered very masculine at the time, which Georgiana wore on the Westminster campaign trail for Charles James Fox. (She was instrumental in him being re- elected in the 1784 general election and was one of the first women to be on the front line of British politics.) Her marital arrangements. She lived at Chatsworth with her husband and his mistress, her close friend Lady Elizabeth Foster, and had an affair with Charles Grey, who was later prime minister and 2nd Earl Grey, after whom the tea is named. Their story was told in the 2008 film The Duchess starring Keira Knightley in the title role. When Georgiana died at the age of 48 (heavily in debt to Rose Bertin, Marie Antoinette’s dress designer, among others), thousands gathered outside Devonshire House, then the London residence of the Devonshires. Her obituary in the Morning Chronicle said: ‘For no less than 33 years have we seen [the Duchess of Devonshire] regarded as the model of fashion.’ Her style influence still reaches down generations later. Left: Georgiana, painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1775-6. Opposite (from top): Stella Tennant with her grandmother Debo photographed by Mario Testino in 2006, and Debo at Chatsworth, 1952