Lady Cunard (3 August 1872 – 10 July 1948), born Maud Alice Burke in San Francisco, was described by The Times as "probably the most lavish hostess of her day." She came from American society and, after an early setback in romance, married Sir Bache Cunard, grandson of the founder of the Cunard shipping line. The match was a social and financial foundation rather than a love match, and by 1911 Lady Cunard had moved to London with their daughter Nancy, where she found her setting.
Her gatherings at her London house were known for drawing an unusually mixed crowd: members of the royal family and their circle alongside musicians, writers, and unknowns, "anybody so long as they were interesting." She had a serious interest in music and the arts, and became one of the most prominent supporters of the conductor Thomas Beecham and his various musical ventures.
The Cartier Fashion Show
The occasion that brought Lady Cunard into Cartier's story most directly came when she was organising a charity fashion show in aid of Beecham's Imperial League of Opera. She had secured the couture houses Worth and Callot Soeurs and the Parisian hairdresser Émile; what she needed was jewels. Over lunch at Brown's Hotel in Mayfair, she put the proposal to Jacques Cartier.
Jacques agreed at once. He recognised the event as an opportunity to showcase new ideas in front of some of the most significant clients in London, and he set his team to work on a programme that went well beyond supplying stock. The show, staged at the Mayfair Hotel, became a full display of Cartier London's design thinking in the late 1920s: bandeaux, hair clips, brooches arranged in unexpected ways on daytime dress, coloured stones from the East set against Worth and Callot gowns. One of the more unusual ideas involved decorating the models' knees with miniature paintings, visible beneath the slit skirts of the era. The press was genuinely impressed: Tatler noted that "the jewels, introduced with the utmost discretion, seemed to cast a shadow over the triumphs of the dressmaker's art."
The show raised £500 for the charity over two performances and generated extensive coverage across the London press. The full account of the preparations and the scale of the undertaking is in The Cartiers, ch. 7.
A Sustained Clientele
From Lady Cunard's perspective, the fashion show was a great success, and her loyalty to Jacques was secured. Through the 1920s and 1930s she became one of Cartier London's most active clients: in 1929 alone there were more than forty orders to her account. These ranged from repairs and the conversion of older pieces, such as a vanity case remade into a cigarette case, to the purchase of significant jewels when the mood took her.
She appears in the story of the 1930s Cartier London not only as a buyer but as a social node. It was at her house that Edward, Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson could count on warmth and encouragement when the rest of London society was more guarded. Lady Cunard, as a fellow American, was a firm ally of the couple. After the abdication, that particular social world shifted sharply, and Lady Cunard's place within it shifted with it.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 7 ("Precious London: Late 1920s") and ch. 8 ("Diamonds and Depression: The 1930s")
- Wikipedia: Maud Cunard
