Fashionable Facts About Mona Von Bismarck, The “Kentucky Countess”
Mona von Bismarck was the 20th-century socialite that the fashion world dubbed “The Best Dressed Woman in the World”—but there was more than chiffon in the folds of her gowns.
1. She Was The “Kentucky Countess”
Mona von Bismarck, the “Kentucky Countess”, lived a lavish life full of haute couture gowns, imperial Roman villas and jewels as big as watermelons. It was also full of scandalous divorces, personal betrayals, inexplicable tragedies and secrets so dark that they followed her to the grave. Then she got a taste of her own medicine.
2. She Had Humble Roots
Mona Travis Strader was born in 1897 in Louisville, Kentucky, to Robert Sims Strader and his wife, Bird O'Shockeny. No matter how far she went in life, she never truly forgot her native Kentuckian roots. Her father was little more than a humble horse breeder and trainer at Churchill Downs. But it put her in the right circles.
3. Her Grandparents Raised Her
No one knows much about Mona’s earlier years, before she started gracing the society pages in head-to-toe couture. We do know that her parents got divorced when she was just five years old and that her grandparents raised her in Lexington, Kentucky. She clearly wanted a far more glamorous life than what her grandparents could provide.
4. She Married Into Money
Mona knew one easy way to lift herself up out of poverty. In 1917, when she was just 20 years old, she married into money for the first—but not the last—time. She likely met her first husband, Henry J Schlesinger, through her father, who was working as a horse trainer at Fairland Farm—which Schlesinger owned. All Mona cared about was the money.
