Several years ago, my friend Jessica Lebos referred to Alexandra Trujillo de Taylor in this publication as the “dazzling downtown doyenne” whose “parties are so legendary that invitations are coveted by even the most cerulean of bluebloods.” An apt description indeed.
Born into an influential, formal family in Mexico City, the stylish doyenne came to Savannah in her early 20s to stay with her then-pregnant sister and brother-in-law, an engineer here on a temporary work assignment. At a cocktail party hosted by recently deceased downtown legend Alvin Neely, she met the export manager of a freight-forwarding company who relentlessly pursued her to stay on and work with him on a new multi-million-dollar contract with Mexico.
The young woman eventually accepted his offer, and quickly surrounded herself with new friends, mostly retirees living in the historic district, graciously hosting cocktail parties and formal dinners for them. She began holding events for Savannah Symphony musicians, for actors in SCAD theatrical productions, for college students, writers, artists, “the eccentric of the city, and anyone I found interesting.”
So magnificent were her soirées, she quickly earned the moniker, “The Duchess of State.”
Such an infamous ability to leverage the power of exquisite parties to enhance the lives of others earned Trujillo de Taylor the honor of being named as one of the nation’s best party hosts in The Salonniere 100 of 2018, putting her in such heady company as Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey. The next year, she published the hardcover book, “High Drama Tablescapes,” her passion project whereby she says, “I create a stage upon which the world can dine.”
So, it was with delight, if not a bit of trepidation, that I accepted the invitation – printed, and emblazoned with her own crest – to an afternoon tea party (Dress: Summer High Fashion and Hat Required). I had a perfectly delightful afternoon mingling with an eclectic mix of Trujillo de Taylor’s friends and acquaintances, including novelist and founder of The Moth, George Dawes Green, in town to promote his newly published “The Kingdoms of Savannah.”
I had originally met the Duchess while volunteering as a coach for the 2016 TEDxSavannah. An attractive brunette, always in a brightly colored, dramatic dress, and almost always adorned with strands of antique pearls, her talk centered on meeting Adam Turoni while he was a “very shy, very young, millennial.”
Subsequently invited him to a cocktail party at her home, he arrived holding a small box of chocolates as a hostess gift. “Each chocolate truffle was carefully packaged, beautifully presented. When I asked him where he had bought them, he told me he had made them and designed them himself in his kitchen. I couldn’t believe it! Such beautifully crafted, delicately made chocolates, out of this shy, nervous young man? …In 2011 we founded Chocolat by Adam Turoni.”
Trujillo de Taylor designed three whimsical chocolate ateliers for Turoni’s creations: an Alice in Wonderland-inspired chocolate tea party for the original Broughton St. store; a magical orangerie with ornate treillage and greenery for the Charleston King St. store; and a Chocolate Library where truffles are catalogued in bookcases among encyclopedias, novels, and gallery walls of art on Bull Street.
The drama, style and artistry of the chocolate stores is also evident in the Duchess’ elegant Victorian District home filled with books, China, flowers, objects d’art and, to my delight, a collection of wonderfully intriguing paintings, which I discover, have all been commissioned…
I meet Trujillo de Taylor a few months later to discuss the commissions. The very first commemorates attending a Telfair Ball soon after her arrival in Savannah. A fashion designer (whose name she can no longer recall) sold encaustic paintings of his creations to raise money for fabrics. Interestingly, she discovered him at a fashion show hosted at the sorely missed Venus de Milo bar and club (the creation of artist Shelley Smith) and commissioned him to portray her in her fabulous custom-made gown.
“From then on, paintings have become the way I capture an era of my life,” she tells me.
The Duchess, however, cannot relinquish control to the artists she commissions: “You can teach technique, but you cannot teach the idea – the conceptual visualization of what it is you want. And I am good at that! I have all kinds of ideas of what I want depicted.”
She will go so far as to draw sketches of how she wants the painting to look and the elements she wants it to contain. When I laugh and ask if that is ever perceived as insulting, she immediately responds, “I only commission people whose hand I can guide! The painting must be exactly what I want.” Her process is to have the painting in her mind before she discovers an artist whose style will convey her vision most appropriately.
When she and husband Daniel Taylor were married, the Duchess commissioned SCAD painting major Ryan Brennan to commemorate her single years. A towering portrait in rich red hues hangs in her foyer, depicting her rising over Savannah and the buildings that pertained to her life at the time. A book under her foot represents the invitation lists to her infamous parties; sheet music and comedy and tragedy masks in her left hand represent the soirees she hosted for the Symphony musicians and SCAD theater students; and the black “X” in her right hand represents those who have fallen from grace, forever crossed off her invitation list!
We next look at a beautifully rendered, largescale wedding portrait, also painted by Brennan. Beneath each spouse’s coat of arms, the young couple hold ribbons, representing the national colors of the USA and Mexico, entwined with a tamarind – Daniel’s nickname for his wife.
“I am painted shoeless as I want to represent how Daniel keeps me grounded,” Trujillo de Taylor says, adding with a laugh, “But of course I have to be on a pillow!”
An equally stunning oil painting of the couple was created by Columbian artist Pedro Covo whom the Duchess met during a SCAD open studio night at Alexander Hall. Covo primarily paints images of swimmers in pastel teal, green, and blue waters, and it was this delicate palette that drew her to commission a piece for the pink apartment she rented for 18 months in Charleston whilst opening the newest Chocolat by Adam Turoni.
Also hung downstairs is a ten-year wedding anniversary commission, an imposing portrait of the Duchess painted by the flamboyant and eccentric, opera-caped Dominican Republican artist Alexandro Santana. Next, are small woven portraits (hers in bouclé and Daniel’s in tweed) created on a Jacquard loom by Brazilian artist Willian Nassu who had a stunning SCAD MFA thesis exhibition “Savannah Icons” at the Andaz hotel in 2016.
In the downstairs hallway are intriguing works by the Polish artist Jason Zaloudik whom she met while he was working at Wright Square Café. Self-taught, Zaloudik created large mosaic portraits of each spouse, composed of tiny squares. Daniel’s squares are photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger (he was into bodybuilding when the couple met), and the Duchess’ squares are composed of “my coat of arms – and a crown of course!”
Climbing up the staircase, we look at a work by Mexican muralist Adolfo Hernandez, another former SCAD student. This portrait was commissioned to pay homage to Trujillo de Taylor’s Mexican heritage. Painted in a brightly hued, flat, graffiti-style, she is portrayed as a Tehuana. “Frida Kahlo was obsessed with them,” she tells me. “Tehuana women are from Oaxaca, specifically from a small village called Tehuantepec where I was born. My grandmother wore this outfit every day of her life.”
In her dressing room hangs a portrait by untrained artist Jor Smith Mitchell who worked as a bellman at the Andaz Hotel and garnered quite a following for his irreverent, colorful paintings occasionally displayed in the hotel.
Uncharacteristically, this is one of the few paintings the Duchess did not control. Given free reign, he chose to paint her as an exquisite stained-glass window in an atypical darker palette.
Also upstairs is a portrait of the couple, rendered by Marcus Dunn who graduated SCAD with an MFA in Painting, and whom they discovered during another open studio night. With his Tuscarora/Pee Dee Indian heritage, Trujillo De Taylor was attracted to his paintings of Indigenous peoples, and commissioned a piece in his spare, angular, almost Cezanne-like style.
Close by, is another Zaloudik portrait commissioned when the Duchess turned 40. She holds a cat with the face of her dear friend and business partner Turoni, and stands, dripping dagger in hand, over former friends who have, quite literally, been swept under the rug.
Yet another upstairs portrait is by SCAD Museum of Art Associate Curator, Ben Tollefson. In his colorful, hard-to categorize technique (Pop Art meets Magritte?) he paints Trujillo de Taylor and a good friend, their hair braided together to depict how, despite their cultural differences, they think the same way.
Even with a painter of Tollefson’s stature, Trujillo de Taylor first presented a sketch of what she wanted. Elements include the peonies she loves; the porcelain she adores; Daniel portrayed as her knight; a teapot pouring into an ocean of tea; a forked tongue to visually represent the passive-aggressive nature she sometimes perceives in Caucasian people; and again, in a recurring theme, the littered bodies of former friends.
As we return downstairs for a delightful luncheon, we discuss the custom-made wooden box which artfully conceals her living room’s TV screen and will, one day, be the support for a canvas celebrating her upcoming 50th birthday and the couple’s upcoming 20-year wedding anniversary. She is already on the lookout for an artist for this next commission…
And, of course, in her mind’s eye, the Duchess knows exactly what elements and vignettes she wants portrayed, and the style in which she wants it rendered.
Find Trujillo de Taylor on Instagram @hrhduchessofstate. Her book High Drama Tablescapes is available at hrhduchessofstate.com
This article appears in Oct 5-11, 2022.
