Titled Photographer Says ‘Cheese’ : Lord Lichfield Stays Happy Taking Other People’s Photos

WASHINGTON — He’s been around the world in a plane. Hobnobbed with monarchs in England and Spain. Still, he can’t get started at Polo.

“I went into Ralph Lauren yesterday. I start ordering gear to be put in the bag and the man thinks he’s so smart, he says, ‘I’ve already written up the name, I just need the address.’ I looked down and it said, ‘Snowden.’ I said, ‘No I’m David Bailey.’ ”

Lord Patrick Lichfield chuckles. “The three of us get confused all the time.”

He’s the queen’s second cousin. Not the one who married Princess Margaret. Not the one immortalized in “Blow Up.”

He’s most often described as official shutterbug of the world’s most beautiful women and social photographer nonpareil. He happened to snap that little event at Buckingham Palace when Charles married Di. To prove it, he carries a Polaroid of the newlyweds in his Filofax. An unusual sort of business card.

One Envy in the World

“If I have an envy in the world, it is of people who are very happily together,” he says.

He has parlayed his position into a career as an international man-about-hemispheres, a sort of crest-for-hire: snapping pictures, shopping for custom-made shirts and shoes, having drinks with celebrities, endorsing commercial products on television. He also was, for years, the man in the Burberry raincoat ads. Now he just shoots them. You know the ones. Lord and Lady Finger on the lawn of their 17th-Century estate in the mist. “They’re not models, they’re real people,” says Lichfield.

He came to this town not long ago to lunch with a gaggle of social A types, and observes: “This whole city is so pristine and polished. It looks like a wedding cake. I’ve never seen more Doric and Ionic columns.” He also was here to promote a book he edited, “Courvoisier’s Book of the Best,” a sort of Michelin guide to the good life and the only reference book Robin Leach would ever need.

Armed with a head full of tousled silver hair and a generous dollop of what Evelyn Waugh described as “creamy English charm,” Lichfield paused long enough for several postlunch Marlboros at the Willard Hotel. “60 Minutes” once did a profile of him in which Morley Safer called him “a lounge lizard.” He took no offense. It would be hard to imagine the instantly likable Lichfield taking offense at anything, except maybe being confronted by anything ordinary.

“I have only one hatred--mediocrity.”

His First Break

He has a house on Mustique, the family estate in Staffordshire and a studio in London. But Lichfield, at 49, credits his success to luck. After Harrow and Sandhurst, he started his career in the early ‘60s doing magazine work. He got his break when he met fashion doyenne Diana Vreeland.

“I went to Paris to meet her. She was sitting alone in a bar. She was all alone. The first thing she said was, ‘Who’s the best-dressed man in the world?’ I said, ‘Me.’ She said, ‘I like that kind of (nerve). Who’s the second best-dressed man in the world? I said, ‘The Duke of Windsor.’ She said, ‘I want 10 10x8s of him by tomorrow.’ ” Lichfield shot him in sequence, tying the famous Windsor knot. She gave him a contract in New York. “It has nothing to do with my photography. It’s pure subterfuge.”

He chuckles to himself. Lichfield even finds himself amusing at times.

He edited the first version of the “Best” book two years ago and had to update it. Naturally, all expenses paid for by Courvoisier.

“I’m now having to go through it all again,” he sighs. “I know I like staying at the Carlyle or the Pierre and I don’t really want to go and try the Plaza again but you know . . .” He thinks the book is a wonderful telephone directory. “Every airline, every good hotel.” Stores, nightclubs, galleries as well. Coincidentally, a restaurant of which Lichfield is part owner, London’s Tai Pan, is rated among the best.

Always on the Road

“What we’re trying to do with this is to make a useful guide. I read it whenever I go anywhere. I’ve been to Hong Kong a million times in my life, certainly three, four hundred, I say, ‘Checklist; do I want a shirt made? I’ve got to go to our man; do I want some shoes made? I’ve got to go to such and such.”

Why is he always on the road? “I like being employed.”

He is asked for his own opinion on the best things in life.

Best drink? “The best drink for me in the world is Rodier Crystal Champagne.”

Best flower? “Without any doubt, a rose called ‘Mal Maison.’ ”

Best woman? “Two legs. Someone who’s got all their facilities.” He chuckles. A Freudian slip? “My secretary’s called Felicity and she’s known as facility.”

Best smell? “I’m sure we all have it, if we’re lucky enough to have lived in the same house since we were children. There is that instant smell when you open the front door, it’s even better when there’s been some old wet raincoats thrown down and a slightly damp dog, tweeds. That to me has always been the best smell.”

But it’s not enough to keep him home. He was divorced in 1986 from his wife of 11 years, Leonara (they have three children), and now spends only a few days a month in England. “It’s such a wonderful life. Who else gets paid to go to Washington and have a good lunch?” He says his marriage broke up over his time on the road. “It doesn’t break up because another girl was there or she’s run off with someone else. I didn’t see the warning signs. Now I don’t have to worry about that.” As a single man, “you move twice as quickly. By golly, you do.”

Oaks From Acorns

He lights a Marlboro. “My main occupation in life, quite secretly, is collecting acorns. It’s very very rewarding, because every acorn I’ve collected, I’ve grown an oak tree out of. I’ve now got 78 different types of oak trees.”

Curious that a man who travels so much should be drawn to tending trees. “Well, we all have to be at peace, don’t we? I happily spend two or three hours a weekend alone, amongst those trees.”

Not people.

“No, I think I’ve gotten a bit frightened of people.”