Mercedes Bass (nee Tavakoli, born 1944) is an Iranian-American philanthropist and socialite active in New York City, Aspen, Colorado and Fort Worth, Texas.
[11] In 2014, she was the underwriter of the Oscar de la Renta exhibition at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas.
Her first husband, Ambassador Francis L. Kellogg, served as a Special Assistant to Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger.
In June 1986, at the 'Black and White Ball' hosted by the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace, she first met Texas billionaire Sid Bass.
They met again at a Bastille Day party in the Hamptons several weeks later where she caught his attention by throwing a bread roll in his direction.
[1] In January 1990 they purchased four adjacent properties on Fort Worth's Crestline Road, overlooking the Trinity River valley.
Two houses were combined into one large mansion, a third was razed after representatives of charitable causes pried loose all salvageable paneling and plumbing from the premises, and the fourth property was transported across town to the grounds of the Lena Pope Home for Troubled Children.
[1][15] Following the divorce, their 26-acre Fort Worth estate 'Oak Hill' on Crestline Road, their Aspen home, and New York residence at 845 Fifth Avenue were all transferred to her.