beau monde

Once upon a time, Slim Aarons would have been the one to capture such beau monde happenings.

Comparing the West to Nazi Germany, the Russian leader laced his speech with derision for the “political beau monde” in Europe and the United States, and for the “slave-like” Russians who supported it.

The largest are more than 10 feet tall, and they’re profuse with Mediterranean color that must have startled the Russian beau monde at cocktail hour.

If there were a moment that epitomized the English beau monde’s self-styled insouciance in the face of the London Blitz, it took place in April 1941, at the Savoy Hotel.

She would sit and talk long into the night with the flamboyant artist Francis Bacon and the rest of that decade's rakish beau monde.