Pop
Grace Jones
Grace Jones (born 1948), the Jamaican icon of disco, new wave and pop, model and actress with a sculptural persona, has a long-standing link with the Riviera. In the 1980s she frequented Dad Régné’s nights in Clarens, and it was she who, in 1990, headlined the rebirth of the Théâtre de l’Alcazar in Territet. She returned to the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2017 and again in 2025, when she set the Lake Stage alight and struck a memorable pose on a balcony of the Montreux Palace.
Grace Jones in Montreux: from the Alcazar to the Lake Stage
1990: headlining the rebirth of the Alcazar
Long before the festival stages, Grace Jones belonged to the Riviera’s nocturnal legend. The decorator Dad Régné, a figure of the lakeside nights with whom she had a relationship, received her in his private discotheque at the Villa Dubochet in Clarens.
When his Théâtre de l’Alcazar in Territet was reborn in 1990 after a fire, it was Grace Jones who headlined. Memory also keeps a night at La Calèche, the adjoining carriage museum, where two young attendants, dressed as little footmen, welcomed the guests with torches while she held court at the top of the stairs.
2017: body-painting on the Lake Stage
In 2017, Grace Jones set the Montreux Jazz Festival alight. In her late sixties, her body painted with graphic patterns and crowned with spectacular headdresses, she led a show of undimmed energy, changing costume for every song.
2025: the return to the Lake Stage
On 12 July 2025, Grace Jones returned to the Lake Stage of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Golden masks, spiked headdresses and an imperial silhouette: past seventy-five, she delivered one of the most talked-about moments of the edition.
The portrait on the Palace balcony
Every summer the festival’s artists make the Montreux Palace their own. In July 2025 Grace Jones posed there on one of the balconies for Anoush Abrar, the festival’s official photographer since 2018.
The photographer recounted the scene to Blick: almost vulnerable backstage at first, the singer became Grace Jones again in an instant when he teased her. “Don’t play with me”, she shot back, before laughing, provoking and staying a good quarter of an hour where the session was meant to last only seconds.
This portrait had a spectacular second life: for the Images Vevey 2026 biennial, Anoush Abrar spread it across a thousand square metres on the façade of Nestlé’s headquarters in Vevey, alongside other giants of the Montreux Jazz Festival gathered for the festival’s sixtieth anniversary.
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