The scarves, gloves, and hats that Princess Christina Oxenberg of Serbia and Montenegro sells at Barneys and Bloomingdale’s are produced in Peru. The fine wool she uses has its provenance variously in Australia, the Andes of Bolivia and Peru, and Patagonia. And artisans in Italy fine-comb her products before they make their way to stores in New York and elsewhere via her living room in Aspen.

Living room?

“I’m giving the phrase ‘handmade’ a new meaning,” Princess Christina said. “I’m such a stickler for detail that I label and imprint every item personally in my living room. I pack the goods personally exactly the way I want. I drive the crates to the courier. And I’m on the phone until I know for sure that my goods have arrived in the stores.”

Isn’t that stressful, not to mention a tad unexpected for a woman with blue blood?

“I see myself more as a global businesswoman,” Princess Christina said. “I’ve never warmed up to the royalty circuit.”

That circuit winds its way through Manhattan, London, Paris, St. Moritz, Geneva, and West Palm Beach, Fla., as defrocked members of European royalty – including Christina’s mother, Princess Elizabeth of the erstwhile Yugoslavia; her father, Howard Oxenberg, an American businessman, and her older sister Catherine, who starred in “Dynasty,” the hit television series – gambol with members of the American aristocracy.

Princess Christina’s own circuit these days consists of buyers at department stores and suppliers of material for her two lines, Christina Oxenberg and Ox. It also involves marketing in America, Canada, and Britain – where her products are sold – with the assistance of her Peruvian business partner, Fernando Alvarez, who lives in Toronto.

And it often involves responding to questions about a novel the princess wrote a few years ago, “Royal Blue,” that’s still talked about among a certain social set. The novel was widely seen as a roman a clef and, let it be known, did not fetch Princess Christina particularly warm reviews from members of that set. She also gets asked about rumors that President Kennedy was her real father.

Was he?

“I just don’t discuss that,” Princess Christina said.

But she acknowledges that the rumors might make for a good plot for another novel.

“I’m still a writer at heart,” she said. “I see stories all around me. But I’m a highly laconic, skeptical person, and I can’t stand the hypocrisy of those running around claiming to be blue-blood types or other high-borns. I’m a person who’s very much grounded in my daily realities.”

Those realities hadn’t seemed particularly pleasant until not so long ago. After attending 14 schools in various countries, including America, Britain, and Spain, she decided it was time decelerate her colorful lifestyle.

“I wanted to gain control of my life,” Princess Christina said. “My friends and I were actors in a play. But there really was no play. It was all fun, adventure, and make-believe. So I decided to get married.”

But domesticity brought unanticipated disappointments.

Her first marriage, to an artist, ended after her husband chose painting landscapes in Marrakech, Morocco, over conjugal life with the princess. Her next marriage collapsed after Colombian guerrillas seized a mountaintop house that she and her second husband built. She said with a smile that her second husband made his exit after the house was seized, perhaps chagrined over the fact that Christina hadn’t brought him the dowry he might have expected from a princess.

“He realized that I had no palaces, no royal staff – he was quite depressed about that,” she said.

It was a chance meeting with Mr. Alvarez in Toronto that led to her start as a businesswoman.

“What did I know about doing business?” Princess Christina said. “But I did know a thing or two about animals.”

She knew, for instance, that wool from merlino sheep in Australia was high-grade and durable. She knew that the hair of the Andean suri – a miniature camel of which only 40,000 are left in the world – was so fine that shawls and scarves made from it were practically weightless. She knew, too, that wool from the guanaco of Patagonia – a creature akin to a llama – was similarly fine. And she knew that musk ox from Banks Island near the North Pole yielded exquisite wool.

She and Mr. Alvarez decided to go into business together. He brought seed capital, about $100,000, and together they sought people who harvested wool from the aforementioned animals. They also hired Italian artisans who combed the wool in a special manner so it would not shred. Mr. Alvarez found craftsmen in his native Peru who transformed that wool into the items that Princess Christina now sells at Barneys and Bloomingdale’s.

That she gained entree to Bloomingdale’s was also serendipitous, just like her encounter with Mr. Alvarez. While skiing in Aspen last February, she met Terry Lundgren, chairman and CEO of Federated Department Stores, which owns Bloomingdale’s.

Princess Christina said Mr. Lundgren in turn called colleagues at Bloomingdale’s in New York. That call resulted in a prominent display of the princess’s lines.

The items in those lines can cost anywhere from $65 to $1,000, prices the princess feels are within reach of the urban middle class.

Those items carry a label featuring an attractive woman languidly reclining with one of Princess Christina’s handmade products. Another princess, perhaps?

“In a way,” she said. “It’s my sister, Ashley. She’s a senior at a California university, and she’s dazzlingly smart. I asked her to model for me because – Why not? It’s good to keep a small business all in the family. Besides, she personifies what I’m trying to sell – silent luxury.”