A chain-smoking 25-year-old socialite who is covered in tattoos and says she lives ‘paycheque to paycheque’ hopes to be the new ‘unladylike’ face of the aristocracy.
Lady Venetia Baring wants to show people that it does not have to be ‘a stuffy, outdated and possibly ignorant existence’.
She has been featured in campaigns for Nike and Dr. Martens – and even had a small cameo in Disney’s 2023 superhero film The Marvels.
Despite being related to two wealthy families, the Barings and the Rothermeres, Venetia says her life is that of an ordinary person.
Speaking to Tatler, Lady Venetia Baring – the daughter of the 4th Earl of Cromer – spoke about carving out her own identity despite her strict, stately upbringing.
‘Some people automatically think I have a stately home and a butler. And that’s not my life,” she told the outlet.
The social media savvy model, who has 19,500 followers Instagramstressed that none of her friends even know she has a title.
Venetia – who recently spent her time enjoying the company of some of society’s best and brightest, including Princess Vittoria of Savoy, Freddie Knatchbull and Tara DuRoss – explained at Tatler’s Little Black Book party how her aesthetic has served as her form of rebellion.
The aristocrat’s public display of brightly colored hair, piercings and ‘tomboy’ fashion is a way to ‘celebrate her body’ and ‘feel powerful’.
In her youth, Venetia grew up between houses in Sloane Square, Somerset – in a now-sold Garde II-listed former parsonage – and Thailand.
At the age of 10, Venetia was sent to boarding school, St Mary’s Calne in Wiltshire, where she enjoyed seven wonderful years of memories and made lifelong friends.
But her rebellious character was already shining: she was caught smoking, sneaking out of school and even making clandestine trips to London for squat raves.
After graduating, she enrolled at the University of Manchester to study art history, but found it surprisingly difficult to connect with people who had a similar educational background to her.
Venetia said, “They were all on my course. I mean, only boarding school people do art history. But they just weren’t welcoming to me. It was a bit confusing. So I went out and made my own friends.”
The aristocrat’s public display of brightly colored hair, piercings and ‘tomboy’ fashion is a way to ‘celebrate her body’ and ‘feel powerful’
Venetia – who is also close to her brother Alexander – has also reconnected with her mother Shelley, who also lives in London and owns a jewelery shop, and admits she wants the pair to take a trip to China together.
With college came her parents’ divorce – which sent Venetia into depression and affected her studies – as her mother and father “really dragged her into it heavily.”
She moved back to the capital in 2018, where her mental health improved after she started working as a barman at Canova Hall in Brixton. There she met her boyfriend Sasha, who worked as a chef. The couple recently celebrated their four-year anniversary.
Venetia – who is also close to her brother Alexander – has also since reconnected with her mother Shelley, who also lives in London and owns a jewelery shop, and admits she wants the pair to take a trip to China together.
However, she has drifted away from her father, Evelyn, 77.
“He remarried a very beautiful, young Thai girl… that’s a bit complicated,” she admitted. “As I get older I realize that she (Shelley) was very hurt and he (Evelyn) panicked. And they are human, they will always screw up, just like us. So I shouldn’t expect too much.’
In her online portfolio, Venetia says she runs a workshop called Divurgent for creatives – ‘where models, photographers and creatives can come together, to learn and grow, hone their skills, and build a community here in London to build’.
She moved back to the capital in 2018, where her mental health improved after she started working as a barman at Canova Hall in Brixton. There she met her boyfriend Sasha (both pictured), who worked as a chef
In her online portfolio, Venetia says she leads a workshop called Divurgent for creatives. Pictured with her guinea pig
A chain-smoking 25-year-old socialite who is covered in tattoos and says she lives “paycheck to paycheck” hopes to be the new “unladylike” face of the artistocracy and wants to show people that it’s not “some stuffy, outdated and possibly ignorant existence’
It comes as Lord Cromer responded in a scathing letter to The Times to claims from his daughter’s Tatler interview that his mother was not a fan of the late Princess Diana.
‘Lady Venetia Baring claims that my late mother, the Dowager Countess of Cromer, said: “She really didn’t love Diana” and that “Diana had to get a grip,” he said.
The Old Etonian colleague then made it clear that in his opinion it is inconceivable that his mother would ever have uttered such words, noting that she “served the late Queen for seventeen years and was rewarded for her loyalty, work and affection by a CVO’.
“Throughout her long service, my mother was the soul of discretion,” he added, noting that his mother would “undoubtedly” have learned the need for such discretion while married to his father, who was successively governor of the Bank of England and then British ambassador in Washington.
“It would be completely out of character for my mother to make a comment about a member of the Royal Family to anyone, especially one of her grandchildren,” Lord Cromer concludes, “and especially to Lady Venetia Baring, my daughter, those born after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.’
Evelyn is now divorced from Venetia’s mother Shelley and lives in Thailand with his third wife, Jiraporn Buengman.
View the full article in the February issue of Tatler available from Thursday 1 February via digital download and on newsstands.