Raffles 1887

STORIED SUITES

Elizabeth Taylor Suite at Raffles Singapore

IN 1957, Elizabeth Taylor and her third husband, Hollywood producer Mike Todd, embarked on a round-the-world tour to mark the first anniversary of Todd’s Oscar-winning film, Around the World in 80 Days. The couple had not been together long, having married after a whirlwind romance earlier that year.

After kicking off their tour in Australia, Taylor and Todd reached Singapore in mid November 1957, staying at the suitably glamorous Raffles Hotel. History does not record a great deal about their time in the city-state, but we know Taylor visited a local store and purchased a stuffed rabbit, a tiger and a lion for the philanthropic Shaw Foundation’s Christmas Tree Fund. We also know she bought a strapless evening gown from the hotel’s Little Shop, run by the formidable Doris Geddes. According to Geddes, Taylor, who had had a baby just three months earlier, thought the gown was “too tight”, but wore it anyway to a gala dinner at the hotel. Today, a photograph of Taylor looking stunning in the same fitted gown hangs in the Elizabeth Taylor Suite, one of the 12 so-called Personality Suites in Raffles Singapore’s Palm Court Wing.

In truth, there are probably photographs of Elizabeth Taylor in dozens of locations across the globe since the actress was passionate about travelling. As her fame grew, she would take a whole entourage with her wherever she went – staff, friends, family, hairdresser, pets (including a parrot) plus a photographer and security, as well as dozens of suitcases and lots of extremely valuable jewellery (she once left her famous 33-carat Krupp Diamond in a bathroom at the Cipriani in Venice). Everyone travelled first class and, like her, stayed at the finest hotels.

But her 1957 tour with Mike Todd was undoubtedly extra special. As her longtime assistant Tim Mendelson recently told People magazine, one of the things she loved about Todd was that, “He was as fascinated by new places as she was and by the time they got to the hotel Mike would've learned about the local politics, the economy, the people, the society.” He was her ideal travel companion.

Tragically, Todd died the year after their tour when his private plane, The Lucky Liz, crashed in New Mexico, but Taylor always described him as the great love of her life. So while she stayed at Raffles again in 1993 in a show of support for her beleaguered friend Michael Jackson, it is this earlier, more glamorous period of the actress’s life that is rightly commemorated by the Elizabeth Taylor Suite at Raffles Singapore.