Princess Stéphanie's 40th Birthday Special

[michelle]

:) Monaco's wild child turns 40 !

I thought it could be a wonderful idea to go along with all the mags and tv-shows and create a 'Special' for her.

[michelle]

Some very sweet and exclusive pictures will feature this ' Special' ...


Princess Stephanie when she was little....

[Ianna]

Great idea Michelle! And lots of great photos, specially those of little Steph..
The last one with Albert and Caroline is great:)

Here are some;

[michelle]

Thanx Ianna....

Here are some more: Young Stephanie in the 80's and early 90's

[michelle]

She is indeed a very beautiful woman....

[michelle]

She's a real 'Lady' ....:)

[michelle]

Summer 2004 with friend Bernard Montiel

[michelle]

Quotes and Stories from throughout the years....:

Stephanie's main concern was the bald patch around the wound, that the docter had shaved to enable him to stich the gash. Stephanie kept asking Paul how long he thought it would take the hair to grow back.
'Don't wory, honey. Even if it doesn't , I'll still love you.' Paul said smiling.
She looked at him with her characteristic searching intensity which always unsettled him. ' Will you, always?' she asked. He kissed her.

Paul Belmondo and Stephanie in a carribean hospital after Stephanie had a waterski accident. 1982



'First she was a naughty girl, then a very sweet one. She was an interesting child, one original little girl, striking rather than pretty, her face had a chiselled look, defenetly from the Kelly side'

One of Stephanie's teachers in primary school, Les Dames de St. Maur/ Monaco



After Grace arrived and prepared lunch, Stephanie refused to eat what hr mother had cooked and demanded a McDonald's...A chauffeur was deputed to take her to the local Hamburger emperium. When a visitor remonstrated with Grace for pandering to tis kind of behavior, she replied: ' She's my baby doll, she's my baby.'

Paris, 1978



' I was very close to my mother. She was my best friend. There were times when I thought it all too difficult. But my mom wouldn't have liked me to just bury my head in my hands and give up. That's not how she braught us up.'

Stephanie, 1983


'I went to work every morning at nine thirty, stayed there until I was supposed to leave, worked and had a pay cheque at the end of each month. It was a real job. I had my little appartment in Paris and lived on my own...and I learned so much. I learnd all I konw about fashion from Marc Bohan. He was great and I'll never be able to thank him enough for taking me in.'

Stephanie about her professional formation at Dior Couture, Paris



'For many boys I was the ultimate trophy. many declared having an affair with me but it was in their minds and nowhere alse. People often accuse me of having an intense love life, but they don't really know what they are talking about'

Stephanie, 1985


' It's destressing not being able to greet a friend in the street without it being labeled your latest romance. I've known Goeff since I was five and I was very upset the fabricated clichés that were written about our friendship.'

Stephanie about her buddy Goeffrey Moore


' We're very close , all four of us. At one point or another I guess one of us might have drifted off for a while to do his or her own thing but we always come back home. A family is a family, and that's the best thing in the world.'

Stephanie, 1986


'it is very hard growing up in the limelight. Sometimes I just want to scream out and say I am a human being and I have feelings too. There is a limit to everything.'

Stephanie, 1990


'All my family have been to visit. Papa didn't dare to take Louis in his arms. I think grandfathers are a bit scared when babies are so small. But he told me he was very handsome my little baby-son.'


Stephanie about the day after Louis was born. 1992


'We're not in the middle ages anymore, and princess or not, if you want to work you should work. I think it gives the real dimension to your life and for most people it is a fundamental and neccessary dimension, this is important. Just sitting back and doing my nails or so isn't the type of life I want.'

Stephanie, 1996


' Stephanie, I admire you for the way that you live your life and especially now that you are a mother of three turning the golden age of a woman - the Big Fourty. You're slowing down not to live just for yourself but for your family. That's a beautiful thing. I admire you for living your life as you see fit. I see you becoming stronger every day....there is peace within your heart.
I love you Monaco's Wild Child.

Stephanie's close friend Rudy Wilburn, 2004

[Ianna]

Great job done Michelle!

Excellent photos and quotas..I believe is a great joy to have Stephanie as friend..

[sebastian]

I'm going to take on my sisters dedication to that woman I love so much as well.

The following is some of an Gala article of this weeks issue translated from French into English. I hope you like it!

Stephanie at 40



H.S.H Stéphanie Marie Elisabeth, Princess of Monaco, she continues to live like she has been born: free, unique, without any protocol. Febuary 1st she’ll turn Fourty. And this makes us feel strange…

Before her, the worlds royal families had their happy princesses and their princesses of tears….with the youngest of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly the gotha discovers the princess of motorbikes, blue jeans, cowboy boots and tabacco. We surely know people who never liked this, tough luck! Because Steph never stopped making us dream.

Her passion is breath-taking, Her way of existing, amazing. Married twice for the best, divorced because maybe it’s better this way. She doesn’t tell, lessons learned.

For her kids she put aside the pain of a woman, sacrifices little private moments of happiness , forgives everything and rises against those who reproach her for this.

Faithful she’ll always be to those who know how to love her for what she is.

Aquarius ascendent Lion. Her Anti-Serene Highniss knows how to cook – like nobody else she knows to prepare what Papa has hunted - she stiches, kicks the soccer ball, dances, repares the tap, skis like Jean-Claude Killy, plays the piano, irons and rides on horseback. One day she’s the star at Monaco’s annual Rose Ball, the other we find her ‘on the road again’.

She managed to find her spot on the margin of a royalty which never really seemed to want of hers ….she makes it through without…very well, finally, thanx…

‘Me, I stopped to change the games rules and people as well’ she says.

The time she got betrayed by her eldest ‘ s father she faced it with dignity.

Regularly she’s torn through the dirt for believing in her hearts voice, she never gave up fighting and hoping. Humiliated but still standing straight.

Her friends – and they’re quite a bunch – describe her as: affectionate, roguish, enthuisiastic, stubborn, sensitive, hyper-motivated, believing in her convictions and of some frankness sometimes as brutal as her fathers. ‘ Much too intelligent’, you could hear the late Grace Kelly say.

Like her mommy – from whom she inherited this unlimited independence – she feels the need to leave Monaco a bit from time to time. If it is there or elsewhere, she already knows for a long time that happiness is no continoues, stable stade of mind. So whenever she’s got the blues’ she calls Albert, hereditary prince, her brother of seven years older about who Rainier always said: ‘ He’s always had that tenderness towards her’. Beside her father Albert is the only man who listens without judging. She’s lucky to have them.

She knows it.

‘ People look at you’ , Stephanie says, ‘ and you become what they think of you.’

One thing is for sure: In about a year from now, or ten, or twenty Madame Grimaldi, princess of hundred percent, won’t have changed. She’ll still prefer a soccer stadiums tribunes from its princely Loges , With her older sis Caroline – ‘ My Love, my blood…’ – she’ll still have her lil’ fights meant for those who are maybe too close to understand one another. She’ll still love these crazy laughs about crazy jokes, little frog figures, ultrasexy outfits from Jiki and her childhoods Barbies.

Far away from peoples eyes Grace and Steph continue their mother-daughter conversation – those which death itself could not cut apart. And when Rainier, her ‘ Papounet’ – from who she inherited that circus passion and the love for Rimbauds and Apollinaires poetry – will be gone himself, Stephanie will still go on living that philosophy he taught her: ‘ Everybody builds his existence out of what was thrown and given to him and makes it through the best way he can. I don’t look back. I have no regrets.’

[monaco70s]

A magnificent and fantastic tribute to one of the world's most wonderful Princesses!

God I can't believe time has flown by so quickly that now Stephanie will be 40 and Caroline is 48! Yet both look great :)

[sebastian]

Princess Stephanie's official Birthday Pictures
by Bruno Bebert

[iceflower]

2 more days!
By posting some lovely pics, I found in my collection, I'd like to wish princess Stéphanie all the best and lots of joy, happiness and health!
Hope she'll have a great birthday and that my English as well as my technical skills are good enough to join this forum

[sebastian]

Originally Posted by iceflower

2 more days!
By posting some lovely pics, I found in my collection, I'd like to wish princess Stéphanie all the best and lots of joy, happiness and health!
Hope she'll have a great birthday and that my English as well as my technical skills are good enough to join this forum

It is good enough. Especially the last picture of Steph is soooo beautiful.