But I was so excited to see that a Sotheby's auction is coming up with some jewels once belonging to Millicent Rogers! I first heard of this fascinating woman when I was a child, and my parents took me to the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, which is a gorgeous old home filled with her collections of Native weavings, jewelry, paintings, and so much more. I even wrote a novel about her life (alas, not yet published), because she was so, so much more than a fashion icon and heiress. She packed a lot of life into her brief 53 years.
Millicent Rogers (1902-1953) was a Standard Oil heiress, an
artist, a socialite and fashion icon, a renowned art collector, an
activist for Native American civil rights, and still considered one
of the most stylish and fascinating women of the 20th
century. Though she had a short life, plagued by ill health after a
childhood bout of rheumatic fever, it was a full and exciting one
existence, lived in New York, Paris, Austria, Washington DC, Jamaica,
and her final, true home in Taos, New Mexico. She was married three
times, had three sons, and had love affairs with men like Ian Fleming
and Clark Gable. She was an advocate for Native American rights and a patron of the arts as well as a designer and creator of jewelry in her own right. I hope one day you will see my story of her in print! And I hope if you're in Taos, you'll visit her museum, and maybe say hello to her at the Sierra Vista Cemetery, where you can also find many members of the Taos Society of Artists and local characters. It's a wonderful town, and I can see why she considered it her true home.
For more reading on her life:
Cheris Burns, Searching For Beauty and Diving for Starfish
Annette Tapert and Diane Edkins, The Power of Style (just a chapter on Rogers, but it's a wonderful book)
Arthur J. Bachrach, A Life in Full
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