The Mysterious Monsieur D, Indochina, Morocco and More Stories…

Posted: December 24th, 2025 | No Comments »

Some time back I wrote about a number of mysterious references to a “Monsieur D” in Morocco in the post-war years – a bi-racial French-Laotian man, with the family name Doan (or Doan Vinh, Doan Vinh Thuan) – the Vinh Thuan invariably being dropped in Morocco), born in 1915, who called himself Raymond, or sometimes Pierre Raymond and who claimed to be many things (including a Vietnamese diplomat) and lived in Marrakesh and Tangiers in the 1950s and 1960s. He most probably trained as a chemist in either French Indochina or France, he definitely dealt antiques in Tangier and/or Marrakesh. He certainly married the fabulously wealthy heiress Barbara Hutton (her seventh husband) in Morocco. After their marriage in 1964 Raymond Doan styled himself a Prince, apparently a title bought for him by Hutton from the former royal family of Champasak (in Laos).

Click here to read the background on him from London gadfly Barbara Skelton and my digging. And for more on Hutton’s earlier life and trip to China in the 1930s see my book Destination Peking….

Apparently though there’s more to the story, a slightly darker interpretation of the relationship between Doan and Hutton – at least according to John Hopkins in his memoirs The Tangier Diaries that I happen to have been reading recently there were two Monsieur D’s – Raymond and Maurice – brothers…

Hopkins knew Maurice Doan who, Hopkins reports cycled around Marrakesh, also dealt antiques, and liked to have his shoes shined regularly. Hopkins claims Maurice and Raymond had laid a trap to ensnare Hutton (and presumably her millions) in a marriage to Raymond. Hopkins claims Margaret Nairn, the wife of the British Consul General in Tangier overheard the brothers hatch the plan in a Tangier coffee shop. He also notes that the Doan brothers were claiming to be sons of a Laotian Prince even before Hutton bought him the Laotian title later. Hopkins claims their French mother ran dry cleaners in Marrakesh – hence their being in Morocco. Hopkins describes Raymond Doan (in terminology of the times (1963):

‘Art show at the Casino de Tangier. An exhibition of paintings by Raymond Doan. Half-Laotian, half-French, he looks like the orient’s answer to Jack Palace. According to Jim Wylie (an American aesthete in Tangier who later went mad and had to be sent home by the US Consulate), the art show is part of a scheme orchestrated by Raymond and his brother Maurice to lure Barbara Hutton from her palace in the Kasbah (Hutton had moved into a massive property in Tangier). She was conned into buying all of Raymond’s paintings.’

The only example of his painting I could find is the below (I think…) which was, and maybe still is (?), the property of the US Consulate in Tangier (and perhaps donated by Hutton?)…

Slightly later that August 1963 Hopkins saw Raymond racing through the Kasbah of Tangier in an E-type Jaguar and presumed the plan to woo Hutton had been successful. They married the following year and divorced a couple of years later in 1966. Both Hutton and Doan died in 1979.

Here are Hutton and Doan in Morocco…

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