“One reaches an age when one’s courage becomes audacity, perhaps.”
​
Mart Reb, Lady Loverly’s Chatter

In the photograph to the left, the indomitable Elsie de Wolfe is exercising in her Paris salle de bains. Incredibly, that bathroom was one of the most talked about rooms in Paris. Per Stanley Walker's Mrs. Astor’s Horse, A Curious Saga of American Taste, “Decorators probably have more fun with bathrooms than with anything else. Elsie de Wolfe’s bathroom in Paris is the first thing visitors want to see." Elsie herself proclaimed, "“I have had such joy out of my bathroom that it is difficult for me to speak of it in measured terms.”

Read more about Elsie de Wolfe in her autobiography, After All, and in Elisabeth Marbury's My Crystal Ball. 

Image Credits: Innovators of Twentieth Century Style and The Cary Collection

“One principle in life to which I have been fairly faithful is to always cultivate people who are better and finer and cleverer than myself.  It is more morally wholesome to bend one’s knees back and look up, than to drop one’s head forward and look down.”
 
Elisabeth Marbury, My Crystal Ball

Image Credit: My Crystal Ball