Celebrating Robert Lacey’s “Model Woman – Eileen Ford And The Business Of Beauty”

Two years ago when renowned UK author Robert Lacey gave a PowerPoint presentation for the Maidstone’s lecture series, ‘Sundays at the Maidstone,’ Robert brought the legendary Eileen Ford, along with her daughter, Lacey Williams (Lacey’s husband John created “Shrek”) to dinner afterwards at the Maidstone Club. Robert Lacey was speaking then about his best-selling book “Inside the Kingdom,” a fascinating study of the paradoxes of Saudi Arabia’s enigmatic ruling class, politics and culture.

Lady Jane Rayne Lacey and Lady Sharon Sondes. (Photo: Barry Williams/AnnieWatt.com)

On Tuesday, June 16th, Robert’s latest book “Model Woman – Eileen Ford and the Business of Beauty,” was celebrated in New York at a party hosted by Mrs. Carl Tiedemann and Robert’s wife, Lady Jane Rayne Lacey, and attended by friends and avid readers from East Hampton, Southampton and New York.

In attendance at the Tiedemanns’ Manhattan apartment were James and Paola Ayer, Philippe Bigar, Bill Donaldson, Amanda Haynes Dale, Frances Barlow, Wendy and Henry Breck, Tom and Ingrid Edelman, Stephanie Taft Foster, Shelley Gilbert, Mark Gilbertson, Lady Sharon Sondes and Geoffrey Thomas, Helene and Hugh Tilney, Brooke Laughlin, Barbara Tober, James and Carol Hunt, Nick de Liagre, Cordelia Menges and Karen Howard, David and Marie-Alice Sherill, Peter and Judy Price, author Michael Gross, Jen Bawden, Jarvis Slade and Pamela Ferrari Slade, Frederick and Barbara Terry, Guy and Karin Weiser-Pratt, Sharon Bush, Barbara Cates, Charles Manger, Larry Graev, Roberto and Ilyse Buaron, Maurice Sonnenberg, Laex and Marjorie Federbush, Christopher Mason and Ellery and Marjorie Gordon, Rainer and Regina Greeven.

The support team from publisher Harper Collins were joined by Ivan Bart, Managing Director of top supermodel agency, IMG, along with some beautiful former Ford models – Emme Aronson for one, as well as Dr. Catherine Orentreich, beauty surgeon to the Ford stable, and Eileen Ford’s close friends, Les and Judy Gurren, who first introduced Lacey to the dynamic and controversial heroine of his latest biography.

Mounting the Tiedemann’s elegant library steps, Lacey regaled the assembled company with fascinating details of Eileen and Jerry Ford’s rise to power in the fashion world. Publication day had been marked by a spectacular review in “People” magazine, which hailed the book – “part business history, part irresistible gossip” – as “a fascinating look at the woman who, perhaps more than anyone, shaped our ideas of what it means to be a sophisticated American beauty.”

As a sunset glow flooded into the apartment, guests made their way home, anxious to start reading the book!