Grace and Co was opened in 1927, a beautiful banking hall with a distinctive art-deco decadence, run by husband and wife Grace and Florin - a discerning bank for a dapper clientele.
7th son of the Earl of Moorgate, Florin had run away from his stuffy family to join the circus as a young child and trained as a lion tamer and knife thrower. His career was cut short when he was spotted outside a circus tent at a fair by his strict kleptomaniac aunt, who was there to steal brooches and dragged back to the family estate in disgrace. Grace was New York Society debutant living in London with a secret life as burlesque singer, a sensual voice and an elegant style, until her aristocratic mother found her outside a London theatre and put an end to her melodic magnificence.
Grace and Florin met at a secret society for ex-performers fleeing their stuffy upper class families, and were married with the agreement that they would run Grace's family bank for them. But they had an idea to mix financial mundanity with the fun life they'd had to leave behind, and started having secret after hours cabaret shows and parties in the great hall. As an act of rebellion Grace renamed the bank after herself, as very few companies were named after women in those days.
The wildest and most wonderful performers would flock to Grace and Co to entertain and enchant the bohemian bourgeois, boasting bewitching costumes, dazzling dance routines, seductive striptease, and thrilling circus skills. Aristocracy and silent cinema stars would often be spotted there, and even some of the royals were known to sneak out from the palace to attend the parties and mix with the performers.
But the banking establishment found out and disapproved of the debaucherous shows and parties. They shut down the banking hall, arresting the couple and locking the mystical performers inside, preserved in the vault forever.
Or so they thought...
*This story is inspired by real life. Incidents, characters, titles and timelines may be have been embellished, changed or wildly made up with no regard to the truth for dramatic effect.
