Kissing cousins, inflatable mushrooms, a gothic mansion and a lobster banquet

Lady Lola Bute’s 25th birthday bash wouldn’t have looked out of place in the debauched class satire Saltburn.

A 19th-century ancestral pile transformed into a surreal wonderland with giant inflatable mushrooms, banquet tables groaning with lobster and oysters, black-tie-wearing revellers dancing in front of stained-glass windows while sipping Moët through straws, Land of Hope and Glory accompanying a jumbo fireworks display and a guest list comprising Hollywood stars, fashion icons and royalty. It could well be deleted scenes from the uproariously debauched class satire Saltburn – but it was in fact how socialite Lady Lola Bute chose to celebrate her 25th birthday last weekend.

Still, Emerald Fennell, the film’s writer-director, might want to take notes if she ever plans a sequel. If there’s one thing the Bute family really knows how to do, it’s throw an extraordinary party.

This lavish affair took place at the Gothic Revival-style Mount Stuart House on the Scottish Isle of Bute, which is the seat of the Marquess of Bute – Lola’s halfbrother, chef Jack Dumfries. Hundreds of guests, including Sienna Miller, Poppy Delevingne and Princess Olympia of Greece, were flown over for a weekend of hedonistic celebrations. As one attendee, model Jessica Clarke, quipped on Instagram: “How Lola can you go?”

This birthday bash looked like a 10 out of 10 on the Lola scale. One of the weekend’s two parties was festival-themed (the Bute family regularly holidays in Ibiza) and featured giant inflatable mushrooms – a wonderfully incongruous sight in this Category A listed building, with its majestic staircases, ornate ceilings, marble arches and historic oil portraits. Other playful additions included teepee tents and a photo booth, while It girl Lola got into the Glastonbury spirit by donning jeans, a shaggy pink fur jacket, matching pink shades and a provocative skimpy top with “WET” written across it.

Two parties meant a costume change, and at the black-tie event, Lola opted for a tiny silver minidress custom made for her by Annie Doble (who was also a guest) using a vintage 1920s fabric from Egypt. Doble began her business, Annie’s Ibiza, as a vintage shop on the island in 2018 when she was just 25, and it’s still a relatively niche label, but has serious pull with A-listers. She now creates bespoke pieces for the likes of Kate Moss (Doble and Moss’s daughter, Lila, are pals) and Jeff Bezos’s fiancée, Lauren Sánchez. Doble’s USPs are sheer, sparkly and very expensive.

“It’s certainly fun fashion: blingy and glamorous,” explains Caroline Leaper, The Telegraph’s senior fashion editor. “It’s also conspicuous rich-person fashion, not stealth wealth. You have to have an epic figure to pull it off and a carefree attitude.”

Lola definitely has both. In fact, she’s aptly named, with glorious showgirl energy. In numerous pictures and videos splashed across social media she’s either sitting on someone’s shoulders, flashing her pants with zero worries, or boogying on the dance floor while the dress just about contains her cleavage. At one point, she adds a pair of rock-star dark shades. Brilliantly, she also slips into a white feather fur coat and hops on to a local bus. Next stop: absolute decadence.

Sienna Miller, the actress, also opted for Annie’s Ibiza – in her case a bravely sheer £3,900 floorlength cobweb pearl gown. Several others wore Doble creations too, including Camille Charrière, the fashion blogger, who began with a see-through Doble gown and later switched to a barely-there 16Arlington minidress. She wore the latter in a witty photo showing her sprawled across a massive bed, the Bute coat of arms looming on the wall above her. Less is definitely more at a Bute party – when it comes to clothing, at least.

You do expect high fashion from this particular clan. Lola’s mother, Serena Bute, is a model-turned-designer, and Lola’s older halfsister, Jasmine, aka Jazzy de Lisser, is a model and actress. Lola has been dating the gorgeous Dutch model Parker Van Noord, an ambassador for Jean Paul Gaultier, since 2022, and her brother has a young daughter with model Delilah Austin.

Bute parties tend to be multigenerational, blended affairs. This may have been Lola’s 25th, but Serena’s peers were welcome too – such as the 51-year-old make-up mogul Charlotte Tilbury.

sober during her otherwise wild birthday weekend) and instead channelled her trauma into a charitable foundation, the Eternity Movement, set up to tackle the stigma surrounding mental health, suicide and addiction.

Her father, she recalled, was “very proud of it”. She added: “I know he found it very difficult to see me struggle, but I think he knew I would get through this.” Her grief for him likewise had a healthy outlet in her new-found campaigning work.

Perhaps Lola also took inspiration from Jazzy, who in 2009 took the brave step, aged 17, to speak publicly about her hepatitis C diagnosis. When word first got out that she had the blood-borne virus (which attacks the liver), she recalled: “People wouldn’t let their children play with me, or come to our house. I’m nervous about how others will react when they know that I have a disease they associate with drug users.” But Jazzy, who suffered side effects from treatment such as hair loss and eczema, faced that judgment head on by choosing to raise awareness of the disease. She made a short film about her experiences, My Story of C, which won a Media Trust competition, set up a charity, and took part in a World Health Organisation summit.

Serena also spoke movingly about her feeling of guilt for passing hepatitis C on to Jazzy. She took drugs in her early 20s, which is probably how she contracted it – although she didn’t know it at the time. “It is a mother’s worst nightmare,” she said.

In 2022, Lola organised a major public event for the Eternity Movement by holding the dazzling Eternity Ball to raise money for four charities: Place2Be, Action on Addiction, James’ Place, and Grow. Familiar faces such as the Aboahs, Princess Olympia, Miller, Tilbury,

Stella McCartney, Delevingne, Kate Moss and Ellie Goulding were out in force, bidding on auction prizes such as a six-night holiday in Mustique, while bands including Groove Armada played at the after-party. It was a triumph as a fundraiser and for this new empowered Lola.

Whether it’s a public-facing event such as that Eternity event or a private celebration such as her spectacular 25th, Lola always seems to be the belle of the ball.

Down and gown: the lavish scale of the socialite’s party on the Scottish island of Bute recalls Emerald Fennell’s film, Saltburn, left The event also got the royal seal of approval from 27-year-old Princess Olympia of Greece and Denmark, who has modelled for Tatler, Teen Vogue and Michael Kors. Rock ’n’ roll cool came courtesy of Ella Richards, the granddaughter of the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, while British Vogue’s contributing beauty editor, Tish Weinstock, was casting a discerning eye. Many of this weekend’s celebrity guests are regulars at Bute revels. The fashionista-likes of Lady Mary Charteris, Poppy and Cara Delevingne, and Adwoa and Kesewa Aboah are family friends. The last pair even spent lockdown with Lola on Bute in 2020, sharing pictures on social media of prim, wholesome activities such as baking and dog walking on the beach. But everyone let loose at Lola’s 25th, which featured a luxurious menu overseen by Josh, her brother (who runs London restaurant Boom Burger) – lobster, oysters and local “Bute beef ” – and Scottish elements such as an epic birthday serenade by bagpipe and drum players. Lady Mary Charteris was on DJ duties, and she shared a picture of two kissing cousins: a jokey snog between Jack and Catherine Guinness. However, there was one notable absence. This life-affirming party comes three years after the much-loved head of the Bute family – Lola’s father, Johnny – died of leukaemia, aged 62. He had enjoyed a successful career as a racing driver, winning the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1988, and often played down his aristocratic lineage. As Lola explained in an interview in 2022, it was the latest in a series of devastating losses. Kai Schachter, her artist boyfriend, took his own life in March 2019, and her friend Ila Scheckter (the daughter of F1 champion Jody Scheckter) also died in October 2019, of a suspected accidental overdose after battling addiction. Lola and her family then went through the cruel agony of Johnny’s diagnosis, a period over Christmas 2020 where he seemed to have miraculously recovered, and then his shockingly fast decline and death in March 2021. It was a blow to this close-knit family. Johnny was a loving father figure to his stepchildren as well. This was a generation perhaps making up for the mistakes of their own parents, who partied too hard to keep tabs on their offspring, and so made sure to forge proper relationships with their own kids: certainly, that was true of Johnny, Serena and their children. Lola used “unhealthy coping mechanisms”, she admitted, but she cut back on her alcohol consumption (she was reportedly

Model Cora Corré, socialite Poppy Delevingne, Doble and make-up mogul Charlotte Tilbury

Lady Lola – in her barely-there minidress – with Doble

Actress Sienna Miller with designer Annie Doble and fashion blogger Camille Charrière

Mount Stuart House, the family’s ancestral home on the Isle of Bute

The weekend included two parties – one festival-themed, the other black-tie, below

Lady Lola on the dance floor with the inflatable mushrooms

Charrière was among guests who posted pictures of their rooms on social media

The birthday girl with her boyfriend, Dutch model Parker Van Noord