Queer Places:
118 Rue de la Faisanderie, 75116 Paris, France
Maximilienne "Baby" Boréa (born July 30, 1920) was the daughter of Vera Boréa - Contessa Boréa de Buzzaccarini Regoli. It has been said that Marie Thion de la Chaume, Maximilienne Boréa, and Deverell Denise Rochester, a young American woman who was living with a young Swiss woman, Mademoiselle d'Andiran, at 118, rue de la Faisanderie in the 16th arrondissement, were all lesbians. (This property is now the residence of the former president of Peru, Alan Garcia.) Thion de la Chaume complained that Rochester had seriously compromised the security of her Resistance group by talking too freely.
Vera Boréa was the founder with Princess Dilkusha de Rohan of a French fashion house in 1931 at 29, rue d'Artois, Paris, one of the first to offer luxury women's sportswear. The Princess, who had been educated at Roedean, had married in London on 14 December 1922 Prince Joseph Carlos de Rohan (1895-1931), a German aristocrat, and went to live with him at Herkules Haus in Charlottenburg, Berlin. The marriage was barely consumated because of de Rohan's homosexuality, and she met and fell in love with Catherine Devilliers, known as Katusha, a ballet dancer who had been associated with the Bolshoi Ballet. After the Prince was killed in a car accident in 1931 Dilkusha moved to Paris, where she collaborated with Vera Boréa. The fashion house remained open at 376, rue Faubourg St Honore until 2007. When Dilkusha later moved to London she established a fashion house with Nancy Mitford at 4 Savile Row. During the war Princess Dilkusha de Rohan was head of the Swiss desk at the British Ministry of Information. There she got to know Guy Burgess and would later attend the farewell party for him given by Moura Budberg in July 1950 before he left for Washington in August.
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