Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich of Russia - Exile

Exile

In exile, Prince Dmitri lived between England and France. He had a varied career. In the late 1920s he emigrated to the United States where he worked as a stockbroker in Manhattan. He returned to Europe in the early 1930s. For a brief period in the 1930s, he managed Coco Chanel's shop at Biarritz. It was through Chanel that he met a Russian aristocrat who worked as model for her fashion house: Countess Marina Sergeievna Golenistcheva-Koutouzova (20 November 1912–7 January 1969). She was the second daughter of Count Sergei Alexandrovich Golenishchev - Kutuzov (1885 - 1950) and his wife Maria Alexandrovna, born Chernysheva - Bezobrazova (1890 - 1960). After the revolution, Marina and her family moved to Kislovodsk and later to Crimea, where her father served as head of the Yalta County. In August 1920 the family was evacuated to Istanbul and then to Paris. In the French capital, Marina began to work for Chanel. Prince Dmitri felt in love with her and they married in Paris on 25 October 1931. The wedding attracted a lot of attention and the bride wore a Chanel wedding dress. The couple had one daughter :

• Princess Nadejda Dmitrievna (4 July 1933 – 17 September 2002). Nadejda married Anthony Allen, with whom she had two daughters and one son, Penelope, Marina and Alexander; after divorcing Allen, she married William Hall Clark.

During World War II Prince Dmitri served in the British Navy as a captain - lieutenant, and participated in the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk. After the war, he became secretary of the travelers club in Paris. In 1947 he divorced Princes Marina who moved with their daughter to the United States. In 1949 she remarried Otto de Nefvillya (1898 - 1971), a descendant of a German aristocratic family. Marina Sergeievna Golenistcheva-Koutouzova died on January 7, 1969 in Sharon, Connecticut.

During the 1950s, Prince Dmitri studied wine-making and worked as the European sales representative for a whisky firm in London. As his ex wife did, Prince Dmitri also remarried. His second wife was the Dowager Lady Milbanke, née Margaret Sheila MacKellar Chisholm (9 September 1898 – 13 October 1969). Born in Sydney, Australia, she was married, firstly, to Francis St Clair-Erskine, Lord Loughborough (heir to the 5th Earl of Rosslyn), and secondly, to Sir John Milbanke, 11th baronet. She married Prince Dmitri on 20 October 1954. No children were born of this marriage. The couple lived modestly in Belgravia, in central London. Princess Dmitri died October 13, 1969 and was buried in a chapel, near Edinburgh, next to her youngest son, Peter St. Clair-Erskine, who had died, at the age of two, in 1939.

Following the creation of the Romanov Family Association in 1979, Prince Dmitri was chosen as its first president serving until his death a year later in England.