Monte Carlo in the 1960s: Couture, Casinos and the International Social Calendar

Monte Carlo has lived on its reputation for glamour since the casino opened in the nineteenth century. In the 1960s the reputation was renewed. A princess from Hollywood, a Greek shipowner and a prince determined to modernise his country between them turned the principality into one of the fixed points of the international social calendar, and its evenings into a display of couture.

The casino and the company

The casino, the grand hotels and much of Monte Carlo's property belonged to the Société des Bains de Mer, the company founded in the nineteenth century to run the resort. In the early 1950s Aristotle Onassis bought a controlling interest in it; most accounts date this to 1953. He moved his offices into the Old Sporting Club, and for more than a decade he was the dominant figure in the principality's business.

Prince Rainier III, who had come to the throne in 1949, wished to make Monaco less dependent on gambling and more attractive as a resort and a place to live. His relations with Onassis deteriorated over the following years. In June 1966, according to the company's own account, the prince's government approved a large issue of new shares overnight, which the state bought, becoming the company's majority holder.

The princess

The change in Monaco's image began with a wedding. In April 1956 Rainier married the American film actress Grace Kelly, in a civil ceremony on 18 April and a religious ceremony in the cathedral the next day. The wedding was broadcast across Europe and watched by about thirty million people. Princess Grace gave Monaco what no casino could: a figure whose clothes, appearances and charities were followed by the press around the world.

In the 1960s her wardrobe was largely Parisian. When the Victoria and Albert Museum showed her clothes in 2010, the exhibition included around three dozen couture gowns of the 1960s and 1970s by houses including Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel and Lanvin; among them was La Bayadère, a silk chiffon dress designed by Marc Bohan for Dior in 1967. These were the clothes the principality's galas were built to show.

The calendar

The galas gave the social year its structure. The Red Cross Gala, created after the founding of the Monegasque Red Cross in 1948, took its settled form in 1957: held each August in the Salle des Étoiles of the Monte Carlo Sporting Club, with one or more star performers. Princess Grace became its chairwoman, and the performers she brought included Ella Fitzgerald in 1959 and Sammy Davis Jr. in 1961. The Rose Ball, held each spring, became a charity event in 1964, when the Princess Grace Foundation was founded. Between them, the two events marked the beginning and the height of the season.

The galas were more than parties. They were held for causes associated with the princely family, attended by guests who came from abroad for the purpose, and photographed for the international press. An invitation was a social distinction, and the evening required formal dress of the highest order.

Couture on display

A Monte Carlo gala gave couture a setting it rarely had in Paris. The Salle des Étoiles was a room in which the dresses of the guests were the spectacle, and the princess's own gown was the most closely watched of all. For the Paris houses, the principality's calendar was an occasion to see their clothes worn by their most prominent clients.