elegantly dressed, witty, perceptive & determined

That's Clare Booth Luce, to you!

The glamorous playwright, editor and socialite was once horribly ill with arsenic poisoning - according to Wikipedia, from the paint flaking off her stucco bedroom ceiling, which I suppose is exotic enough; but in the antedeluvian days of my extreme youth I'm sure I heard it was from someone or other's eighteenth-century dining room wallpaper.

Anyway, she is on the left here and I do beg you to check out both women's breathakingly groovy shoes... (mind you, look at her trouser suit. The pockets alone! you have to love her. But you know, I used to have a jacket a bit like that in my teens - thrift shop, from the forties - and my uncle Pete said I looked like a movie usherette. The philistine.)