CAROLINE KNOWS BEST
Charlotte’s perfect match is an old friend of the family
European royal Charlotte Casiraghi is engaged to be married and there’s bound to be one person who is particularly happy about the news – her mother Princess Caroline of Monaco.
That’s because Charlotte (31) is marrying the son of one of Caroline’s friends, French actress Carole Bouquet.
Charlotte has been with Carole’s son Dimitri Rassam for little over a year since being introduced by friends at a dinner. It’s understood film and TV producer Dimitri (36) proposed to Charlotte, the granddaughter of Hollywood legend Grace Kelly, three weeks ago during a family skiing holiday in Austria.
Charlotte and Dimitri subtly announced their good news when
Charlotte wore an enormous diamond on her ring finger at
Monaco’s annual charity
Rose Ball. However, it took a while for it to be noticed, thanks to the eyecatching oneshouldered velvet Yves St Laurent gown that Charlotte wore.
Meanwhile Caroline,
accompanied by designer Karl Lagerfeld, was seen sporting a big smile.
Charlotte did not take Dimitri to the ball last year, but at the time the outfit she choose was seen as a surreptitious nod to their romance. She opted for a vintage black and velvet lace dress her mother Caroline (61) wore 17 years earlier to an event that was hosted by Dimitri’s mum Carole (60).
It seems that Charlotte, a professional equestrian who has also dabbled in journalism, has found herself a future husband with a family background almost as colourful as her own. Carole, one of France’s most beloved actresses, is best known as a former Bond girl. She played Melina Havelock in the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only.
She was also the face of Chanel in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the partner of acclaimed actor Gérard Depardieu for eight years. Carole, who like Caroline has been married three times, made headlines when the French government admitted it had monitored her phone calls in the ’80s, allegedly because President Francois Mitterand was obsessed with her, and there were also rumours of a close relationship with another French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
However, it was Dimitri’s father, FrenchLebanese producer Jean-Pierre Rassam, who was the love of Carole’s life. A larger-than-life character who once checked into an expensive Paris hotel and stayed for three years, doing nothing other than drinking and entertaining prostitutes, he died of a barbiturate overdose at 43. Jean-Pierre and Carole had split up by then, but Carole was so traumatised by his death – it has never been determined whether it was an accident or a deliberate overdose – that she couldn’t bring herself to tell their son Dimitri (then three) that his father had died. It wasn’t until about a year later, when he cried for his dad, that she told him. “It dawned on me – ‘What have I done?’” she said later.
Like Dimitri, Charlotte was very young when she lost her dad. Her father, Italian businessman Stefano
Casiraghi, was killed in a powerboat race when she was four. The tragic loss of a parent at such an early age may have been something the pair have bonded over.
In a rare interview last year, Charlotte admitted she suffered a lot of anguish and loneliness thanks to her dad’s death and it made her very sensitive.
“This is what prompted me into introspection, especially since I had a temperament that inclined me to analysis.”
Another thing they have in common is the fact that they are both parents. Dimitri is the father of daughter Darya (6) with his ex-wife, Russian model Masha Novoselova, while Charlotte has a four-year-old son, Raphael. Tongues wagged when she first started dating his father, French comedian Gad Elmaleh in 2011, because she was 25 and he was 41. They never married, despite rumours they were engaged.
The pair kept their relationship largely under wraps, including staying mum when they parted company in June 2015. It was an amicable split, with the three of them continuing to do things together as a family. “I go to see
my baby and he comes to New York to see me,” Gad told an interviewer. “We stay close. We are a family.”
Charlotte and Raphael have been spending time in Los Angeles, where Dimitri often works, as well as Paris and Monaco. Where they will settle remains to be seen, but in the meantime, it appears that a wedding venue has been decided. Carole owns a vineyard on Pantelleria, an island near Sicily, and friends says the couple will tie the knot there in July.