January 25, 2012
Cooler Than You-Gunter Sachs An everpresent member of the original Jet-Set, Gunter Sachs, along with men like Gigi Rizzi, Stavros Niarchos, and Porfirio Rubirosa, would be amongst those who throughout the nineteen sixties gave the European Riviera the decadent reputation which it still enjoys to this day. Born a billionaire on both sides- his mother an heiress to the Opel automobile fortune, his father the founder of the Fichtel & Sachs ball bearing empire which served nearly all European automakers (as well as the Nazi party, for whom his ties the elder Sachs was arrested and later released by Americans after the war)- Gunter spent the majority of his life in the sole pursuit of pleasure. He would receive some acclaim as a sportsman, excelling at tennis, skiing, and particularly bobsledding, and once piloted a hot air balloon across the alps. But Gunter Sachs will always be known first and foremost as a playboy, considered by some to be the greatest who ever lived. His first high profile relationship was with Soraya Esfandiary, the former queen of Iran, but his most famous conquest was Bridget Bardot, for whom he hired a helicopter to drop thousands of red roses over her villa in St. Tropez the day after they met. They would marry two months later after borrowing Edward Kennedy’s Lear Jet and shooting off to Vegas for a ceremony for which the press describes Sachs as clad in “a black mohair blazer over white flannel trousers, white silk shirt open to the waist and Gucci loafers without socks.”  Their marriage would last less than three years, when Bardot would leave him for Serge Gainsbourg, Sachs later quipped that “A year with Bardot was worth ten with anyone else” and gifted her a million dollar diamond ring more than a decade after their divorce. While his third marriage to a Swedish model would last over forty years, it was notoriously open, and Sachs was nearly always seen surrounded by a bevy of attractive young blondes. He would later become a renowned society and editorial photographer, shooting the first nude cover of Vogue and releasing several books of his photography. He also developed a great interest in astrology, founding an institute for its research and authoring a book on its findings, though he stayed a constant part of European society all throughout. On May 7, 2011, at the age of 78, Gunter Sachs retired to his chalet in Gstaad after a long dinner with friends and fired a bullet into his own temple. He was believed to have been suffering from early stages of Alzheimer’s, and stated in his suicide note “The loss of mental control over my life would be an undignified condition that I have decided to counter decisively.” (Note: Shortly after posting this, I found that Sach’s New York City townhouse has recently gone on the market for $38.5 million. Note the multiple large portraits of Bardot. That must have been some woman.)

Cooler Than You-
Gunter Sachs

An everpresent member of the original Jet-Set, Gunter Sachs, along with men like Gigi Rizzi, Stavros Niarchos, and Porfirio Rubirosa, would be amongst those who throughout the nineteen sixties gave the European Riviera the decadent reputation which it still enjoys to this day. Born a billionaire on both sides- his mother an heiress to the Opel automobile fortune, his father the founder of the Fichtel & Sachs ball bearing empire which served nearly all European automakers (as well as the Nazi party, for whom his ties the elder Sachs was arrested and later released by Americans after the war)- Gunter spent the majority of his life in the sole pursuit of pleasure. He would receive some acclaim as a sportsman, excelling at tennis, skiing, and particularly bobsledding, and once piloted a hot air balloon across the alps. But Gunter Sachs will always be known first and foremost as a playboy, considered by some to be the greatest who ever lived. His first high profile relationship was with Soraya Esfandiary, the former queen of Iran, but his most famous conquest was Bridget Bardot, for whom he hired a helicopter to drop thousands of red roses over her villa in St. Tropez the day after they met. They would marry two months later after borrowing Edward Kennedy’s Lear Jet and shooting off to Vegas for a ceremony for which the press describes Sachs as clad in “a black mohair blazer over white flannel trousers, white silk shirt open to the waist and Gucci loafers without socks.”  Their marriage would last less than three years, when Bardot would leave him for Serge Gainsbourg, Sachs later quipped that “A year with Bardot was worth ten with anyone else” and gifted her a million dollar diamond ring more than a decade after their divorce. While his third marriage to a Swedish model would last over forty years, it was notoriously open, and Sachs was nearly always seen surrounded by a bevy of attractive young blondes. He would later become a renowned society and editorial photographer, shooting the first nude cover of Vogue and releasing several books of his photography. He also developed a great interest in astrology, founding an institute for its research and authoring a book on its findings, though he stayed a constant part of European society all throughout. On May 7, 2011, at the age of 78, Gunter Sachs retired to his chalet in Gstaad after a long dinner with friends and fired a bullet into his own temple. He was believed to have been suffering from early stages of Alzheimer’s, and stated in his suicide note “The loss of mental control over my life would be an undignified condition that I have decided to counter decisively.”

(Note: Shortly after posting this, I found that Sach’s New York City townhouse has recently gone on the market for $38.5 million. Note the multiple large portraits of Bardot. That must have been some woman.)

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  1. darcibastiaan reblogged this from kissmeimlazy and added:
    Text by John Munson.
  2. kissmeimlazy posted this