EMILY PRESCOTT: Rose Hambury’s ‘erotic, exotic and eccentric’ teenage years
EMILY PRESCOTT: Rose Hanbury’s ‘erotic, exotic and eccentric’ teenage years detailed in new book
She always looks prim and proper when seen at royal events with her friends and former neighbors, the Prince and Princess of Wales, but Rose Hanbury seems to have a wild side.
The Marchioness of Cholmondeley certainly doesn’t seem averse to a touch of hedonism in socialite Violet Naylor-Leyland’s new book, Rare Birds True Style, which sees Rose and her sister Marina in some ‘moody’ shots at their grand mansion on the childhood, Wembury. House in Devon.
The book details the “erotic, exotic, and eccentric” parties there, describes rooms adorned with braces doubled as curtain valances, and has a bizarre image of a stuffed sea turtle in the bathroom below.
Rose recalls how during her teens her parents converted the large house for parties: ‘Mom turned the basement into a nightclub for us, she painted the whole place herself and hung Moroccan lanterns and suzanis on the walls. She felt a bit like an opium den. At a food-themed party at the house, Rose, whose grandmother was a bridesmaid at the late Queen’s wedding to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947, opted for a “Catch of the Day” outfit complete with fishing nets and an octopus on head.
She always looks prim and proper when seen at royal events with her friends and former neighbors, the Prince and Princess of Wales, but Rose Hanbury seems to have a wild side.
Violet Naylor-Leyland in her custom-made Bindy latex deep-sea diving dress by eco-design innovators Vin + Omi. bound
Another duo, themed ‘dangerous’, featured a game using a gasoline-doused and ignited toilet paper roll being used as a hockey ball.
This was banned after someone’s hair caught fire.
Exploring the homes of other socialites like Lady Martha Sitwell and jewelry designer Sabine Getty in the book, Violet has had her own raunchy moments. She turned up for a Christmas drink at Hatchards, London’s oldest bookstore, wearing a latex “deep-sea diving” dress that she tells me was designed by her friends’ label Vin + Omi. The firm has already created clothing with nettles from King Charles’s garden.