Hillwood

  This weekend I conquered the first item on my 29th year bucket list by going to Hillwood. Have you guys heard of this place? It's the former home of Majorie Merriweather Post, the heiress of the Post Cereal fortune. Ms. Post bought this home adjacent to rock creek park comprising 25 acres after the dissolution of her third marriage (she was married a whopping 5 times (!) - not that I'm judging) and lived there until her death in 1973. You can see from the photo below that she was a real foxy lady.

The house itself is kind of crazy. It's huge, and decorated like the inside of Versailles*, and is essentially an art museum in in its own right. What's so interesting to me is that Majorie was living in this house into the 70s. Can you imagine? People were listening to disco and protesting wars and here was this lovely lady living in this fancy smancy historical french art museum in the middle of DC.

Also, the grounds of this place are amazing. There are Japanese gardens, a rose garden, the formal garden, the putting green, and of course the pet cemetery. No offense to Mr Jefferson, but I think I enjoyed this little adventure more than my trip to Monticello.

 

A big reason I really wanted to see Hillwood now is that they have an amazing exhibit of paper dresses. And these are some seriously fancy paper dresses. The dresses were recreated after popular fashions of the 17th-20th centuries and they were all so impressive in person.

This little number below was modeled off of a dress that Marie Antoinette wore.

 

And these three below, especially the one on the right make me think of Downton Abbey.

There were supposed to be a lot of activities going on in honor of Bastille Day but truthfully I didn't see anything but a few kids playing old french games. Still I thought Hillwood was great fun and I would definitely be willing to go back again.What can I say, looking at french decor, formal gardens and historical dresses in paper form is a real winning combo for me.

* I've never been to Versailles but I have watched Marie Antoinette many times so I figure that qualifies me to make such a statement.