DIDIER GRUMBACH Couture when Maxime was at Schiaparelli wasn’t as expensive as people imagine. Ordinary women, like madame la pharmacienne from Brive-la-Gaillard, came up to Paris twice a year to order her wardrobe. A Dior suit cost around a thousand euros, less than prêt-a-porter today. In 1948, Madame Carven sold nine thousand pieces of couture per season.
In those days, la grande bourgeoisie thought it unacceptable for a titled woman to be a mannequin. Maxime would have been better seen as a vendeuse, had she been able to do the job. If you’d lost your fortune, it was a dignified, socially acceptable occupation. You had a business, like a cabdriver. When you changed houses, you took your clients with you. In 1925, ’30, Patou employed a hundred saleswomen; by the sixties, couture houses were down to eight or ten each.
I shouldn’t like to use the word “volcano,” but Maxime took up a lot of space. Pas une femme gentile, mais une personnage solide. Rabelaisian. None of Loulou’s poetic fragility. She didn’t play the socialite. She was lively, funny, gay, smiling, charming, a brilliant hostess, recognized as one of the most beautiful women in Paris.
JANE PENDRY The “Modess. … because” ad she did with Beaton at Arturo López’s in Neuilly, wearing Charles James, they’re like Winterhalters.25
CHARLES JAMES [Maxime] was then at Schiaparelli’s and took time off to pose most profitably for the Modess account, which I had been retained to direct and “dress” … We had a marvelous time and the photographs were marvelous.
MAXIME DE LA FALAISE I was not a model. [Modess was] different. Modess is not the sort of garment most girls model. The reason I really posed, for one thing, was when Avedon … saw me and I was wearing a hat which he thought was my hair—I wish it were—all black feathers. And he insisted against all possible persuasion that [Harper’s Bazaar] should use me … four months pregnant and skinny. I looked like a snake that had swallowed a very small chicken. And certainly I didn’t know how to pose. The photos—even Avedon admits now—were not too good. I look exactly like a spaniel…
[But] I was chic, okay? There was a coat in which I couldn’t walk uphill. Then I had a dress with a screen of black ostrich feathers completely hiding my head. And Hubert … made me a dress in which I couldn’t sit down. It was a sheath with a thing like a chair strapped to the back. I wore it to dinner with Aly [Khan], and they had to bring a stool for me to sit on.
KATELL LE BOURHIS Maxime was in the powder room at a party in the fifties, dressed in a borrowed Givenchy frock with a poufy skirt that narrowed at the bottom. She couldn’t lift it to reach her panties, so she peed standing up. The pee dribbled down her leg, but she spread her feet to spare the dress. Thirty years later, we’re in the elevator of her building in New York, it’s midnight, she’s tipsy, the elevator is slow, she says she can’t wait, and again she pees, standing up, in a couture dress—an immense velvet and taffeta Saint Laurent from the Russian collection. I screamed—screamed! I had on my favorite shoes, satin with organza bows. Loulou was tolerant, but she hated those stories.
Maxime posed for Cecil Beaton in a sumptuous Charles James gown for a 1950 Modess ad. In a quid pro quo, James loaned the dress to Patricia López-Willshaw, and he got her house outside Paris for the Beaton shoot. The gown was one of five James designed for the Modess campaign. Another worn by Maxime in the series, with gathers at the bikini line, allude to the advertised product: sanitary napkins.
Country Life trumpeted Maxime’s engagement to Alain de La Falaise in 1946 with a cover portrait by the London society photographer Monte Harlip. Mme. Harlip was known to coach her sitters with such phrases as “Give me Rembrandt.”
CYNTHIA SAINSBURY Maxime didn’t know what it was to be embarrassed. There was an annual UNICEF charity event in Paris after the war. One year, it had a circus theme. When the lights came up, Maxime was standing in front of everyone dressed as a clown in white tights. Complete, stunned silence. “Well,” the Duke of Windsor said, “we can all be assured now that Maxime comes by her dark hair naturally.” She wasn’t wearing any undergarments.
MAXIME DE LA FALAISE [The duke] looked like a little boy, with face scrubbed and hair combed by Nanny. His favorite trick was to ping the cuffs of his evening shirt, which were on elastic, in the hope that dinner guests would burst into laughter.
HUBERT DE GIVENCHY I’d never cut anyone’s hair before, but for Schiap’s Bal du Ballon in 1949, which had a Montgolfier theme, I gave Maxime a Titus cut, with very short bangs, a style that hadn’t been seen since M. Antoine’s26 Joan of Arc 3 Belle Époque. Maxime’s hair caused a sensation. Sometimes she slicked it down with black Kiwi shoe polish.
I designed a dress for Leonor Fini, and to thank me she gave me a painting. I was tempted by a nude of Count Sforza—Leonor was his mistress—but chose one instead of Maxime in tight jeans—unbuttoned!—and a jacket that showed a glimpse of breast. So avant-garde for the time. But then Leonor and Maxime were a little mad, pardon me for saying. Later I gave the painting to Loulou. It was only right she should have it.
MAXIME DE LA FALAISE Today, Hubert is thought of as such a classicist. But he used to do crazy things in those days—a floppy and sloppy brown suede blouson for himself. And I had the same one in black suede, a matching cloche hat, a gray flannel skirt, a turtleneck and about eighteen rows of fake pearls. We looked like spies, and we’d slouch into the Ritz bar at eleven in the morning dressed like that. The women sitting there had nice suits and hats and gloves and good jewelry. They’d stare at us in disbelief…
I really wanted to design, so [Schiaparelli] let me do something called Schiap Bébé. Those clothes were made in toadstool-y colors and sold in the boutique. I’ve kept one dress that was entirely embroidered in poisonous mushrooms. They were the most sinister-looking baby clothes I have ever seen.
JEAN-NOëL LIAUT There was a straitjacket in white rabbit with shocking pink bows for little girls who played with matches. Simonetta Visconti27 bought one and left her daughter, Verde, in it for hours. It was completely in Schiaparelli’s spirit—even more perverse.
HUBERT DE GIVENCHY Imagine the poor child with a venomous viper climbing up her two-thousand-dollar organdy dress! It pushed the limits of Surrealism. Schiap loved it.
DIDIER GRUMBACH Maxime told me that when she did the little girl’s straitjacket, she was thinking of Loulou.
15 Prince Edmond de Polignac (1914–2010) and his wife, Ghislaine, née Brinquant (1918–2011).
16 Marie-Laure de Noailles (1902–1970), arts patron who, realistic about her looks, admitted to resembling Louis XIV. Noailles was described by a Saint Laurent vendeuse as “inhabillable”—“undressable.”
17 Françoise de la Renta (1921–1983) was not yet married to Oscar de la Renta at the time Maxime is remembering. Françoise de Langlade, as she was born to a mother from Martinique and a Bordeaux insurance salesman, was at pains to erase her one child and first two husbands. Jean Bruère, father of Jean-Marc (b.1941), is always described as a “businessman,” Nicholas Bagenow as a “diplomat.”
18 Jean Hugo (1894–1994), painter and stage designer who collaborated with Cocteau.
19 Élie de Rothschild (1917–2007), banker Rothschild whose mistresses included Pamela Harriman and the antiquaire Ariane Dandois, with whom he had a child. Famously, he never divorced his wife, Liliane, in favor of any of them.
20 Mona von Bismarck (1897–1983), American fashion lodestar, who survived five husbands. Number four, Eddie von Bismarck, was the decorator grandson of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and secretary of number three, Harrison Williams, known as “the richest man in America” for his utilities fortune.
21 Mercedes de Acosta (1893–1968), poet, novelist and playwright whose work is overshadowed by her affairs with celebrated women.
22 Christian Bérard (1902–1949), neo-Romantic painter and a personal hero of Saint Laurent.
23 Houston socialite and Sakowitz department stores heiress whose husband, Oscar, spent 2008 in prison for kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein’s go
vernment for oil contracts.
24 Cofounder of the advertising agency Wells Rich Greene.
25 Franz Winterhalter (1805–1873), painter of voluptuous royal portraits.
26 Antoni Cierplikowski (1884–1976), regarded as the first celebrity hairdresser.
27 Simonetta Fabiani, fashion designer first married to Count Galeazzo Visconti di Modrone, nephew of Luchino Visconti and father of Verde, a close friend of Loulou.
4
Les Mis
BRADLEY LANDER Uberto Corti was married to Simonetta’s sister Mita—and the reason Maxime and Alain divorced. It was the forties—divorce didn’t even exist in Italy. Uberto would’ve had to go to Mexico.
KATE BERNARD Corti was an Italian war hero, “the forbidden love of my life,” Maxime said.
JOHN RICHARDSON Corti was a superficial glamour boy, a Don Juan. He and Maxime made a spectacular couple, though.
MAXIME DE LA FALAISE I knew nothing about French law and if you allowed yourself to be divorced you became something called “une mè re indigne” [an unfit mother]. You lose all your rights as a mother. Alain said I could have one of the children but not both. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t separate them. I know I shouldn’t have married Alain, but I am so glad I did because I’ve got the kids. [They were] first in a very old Catholic family and then a younger Catholic family, who were not perfect. I should have been stronger you see and put my foot down and made a terrible fuss, but I was streaking off with a boyfriend. I know that the kids suffered terribly badly. And a lot of Loulou’s strength lies in the fact that she protected her brother and she made herself strong.
SARAH ST. GEORGE Maxime begged Rhoda for help. Rhoda said, effectively, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”
HAMISH BOWLES It was history repeating itself, wasn’t it, if you look at how terrible Maxime’s parents were to her …
JOSÉPHINE RINALDI Alain’s family intervened, saying Maxime lived a dissolute life, which was somewhat true. Even so, she did work.
Maxime had a good run with Pond’s, leveraging a title she no longer had and that was bogus to begin with. In this 1953 ad and others, the “fashion accessories” designer was “one of the great beauties of society,” “by marriage a member of a French family dating back to the Crusades” who exemplifies “the French genius… for looking… her real Inner Self.” Except for the tiara, there was no shame in Maxime shilling for Pond’s; the Duchess of Marlborough had paved the way.
GEOFFROY GUERRY The divorce decision was against Maxime. The judge was annoyed. He didn’t want to give the children to the mother or the father, because neither took care of them. Henriette couldn’t; she wasn’t young—seventy-seven when Loulou was three. But she took charge, sending Alexis and Loulou to live in the country with foster families.
GABRIEL DE LA FALAISE It was strange for the mother not to be awarded the children—maybe Maxime didn’t ask! If Alain did, she didn’t stand in his way.
KATE BERNARD Maxime felt guilty, more than anything else, about losing the children. I wouldn’t have said she was heartbroken.
MARIE-GILONE DE RIQUET DE CARAMAN-CHIMAY If Alain couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them, there were other solutions. He had the money to pay his Jockey Club dues but not … I’m astounded. Loulou stayed with us in Belgium in the fifties. Obviously, our parents told us nothing.
KIRAT YOUNG Excuse me, in those days, who was actually hanging on to their children? If you were upper-class, you never saw them. Listen, we Indians are brought up in the English way. My brother was sent off to boarding school at five. My father was in the army, moving from pillar to post, and it was the done thing. The first chance you get, you get rid of your kids. Maxime produces two children and has enough of the boring old count and she’s over and out—time for some fun! I’m sure she didn’t go down well with those holier-than-thou Catholic judges. Anglo-Saxon morals were considered unfamily. Loulou’s father isn’t blameless. He could have kept the kids and hired a governess. A governess cost nothing then.
BRADLEY LANDER Maxime was not working with lepers in India. She was going to parties in Paris.
PIERRE DE MONTJOU Loulou and I are the same age, and we’re related.Antoine Hocquart de Turtot, Loulou’s grandmother’s second husband, and my grandfather, Jean, were brothers, and Alain and my mother were first cousins. My parents were separated when Alain and Maxine divorced, so the convenient solution was to send all of us—me, Loulou and Alexis—away together to live with a couple in Villeperrot, a village in the Yonne, two hours south of Paris. M. and Mme. Jean were teachers in their thirties, perhaps with the Red Cross or Order of Malta. We were their only charges. They were not sympathique. It was after the war. Times were difficult. They were a stern, tough pair. We took our meals together. They never asked us what we liked to eat or took us to the shops with them. We were completely shut away, no contact with other children. The house was surrounded by walls. Except for bicycling, we never left the yard. I was very marked by all this. Loulou and Alexis and I felt abandoned. We looked out for each other, like a little cell. No weekends in Paris with our parents. They rarely visited. My mother gave me a Tintin book, and M. Jean confiscated it, saying I was too young. I was very hurt. Henriette did come to see us. She had a hearing aid whose settings we loved to change behind her back. We were devils. She loved us. Une grande dame. But I don’t remember Maxime at all. She was Irish, right? And a model?
Maxime turned up at the Jeans unannounced, saying she needed Loulou right away, that afternoon in Paris: She had volunteered her to appear in a fashion show of sleepwear at the restaurant Chez Laurent. Loulou was clumsy, a stumbler. She fell off the runway and was poised to take another turn when over the loudspeaker she heard the narrator making fun of her, wondering if she’d fall again. She did. Then during the finale, dressed in a nightshirt and holding a candle, she fell a third time. Humiliated, she ran away. Recounting the story decades later, Loulou said she despised her mother.
PIERRE DE MONTJOU Our days were structured: gymnastics breakfast, lessons, lunch, more lessons. The Jeans taught us to read, write and count. Penmanship exercises. It rained a lot. We each had a potager, a square of earth as big as this rug, where we planted radishes, lettuces. The toilet was in the yard, a board with a cutout placed over a hole. We had kittens we loved—and then suddenly they disappeared: The Jeans had thrown them into the toilet. From the bottom of the hole, Loulou and I heard them cry. It was traumatic. M. Jean was not well. I’m sure of it.
MARIE BELTRAMI Loulou’s story reminds me of Les Misérables and the little orphan girl Cosette, living with the Thénardiers, a foster couple.
… the Thé nardiers began seeing the little girl simply as a child they’d taken in out of charity and they treated her accordingly…
Cosette was caught between them, suffering their double pressure as though at once ground by a millstone and torn to shreds by pincers … Not a shred of pity; a savage mistress, a venomous master. The Thé nardier dive was like a web in which Cosette was caught, trembling. The ideal of oppression had been achieved in this sinister domesticity. It was a bit like a fly serving spiders.
The poor little girl was passive and kept her mouth shut.
When little girls find themselves in such a situation, at the dawn of their lives, so small, so naked, among men, what goes on in their souls …? (Victor Hugo)
LOULOU [Mme. Jean] was Bretonne; him, from Lille. She was very religious. She’d wanted to be a nun. One day, the church got her. Her back was paralyzed. She went to Lourdes to walk again. To thank God, she married Him. [M. Jean had] been a Scout, captured during the war for pissing on a Nazi. He was pretty violent. He liked cruel jokes, like putting salt in the yogurt, or setting traps in the forest. [It was] like a novel. [My mother visited] in gold stockings, heels in the mud. M. Jean hated her because she was tall and English. I didn’t know her, but I defended her. I admired her. She’d had a failed youth. She was making up for lost time… He said she angled to have affairs… M
e, I was the big sister. Alexis was small and Catholic. I was pagan. I wrote prayers on the wind. He had an iron belief in the Virgin Mary. I wasn’t weighed down by all that. When you’re a child, craziness is a good companion. It makes you resourceful…
I hated clothes… When I was a little girl I thought wearing a dress was humiliating … [that] everyone would be like me, that I had a modern body, that I was the future. I didn’t dream of myself with long hair and a huge bust. I always pictured myself in a man’s suit… For a long time, I thought I was a boy. I refused to wear a skirt until I was forced to. I was embarrassed to wear high heels…
I never needed to liberate myself sexually. I always moved in an ambiguous milieu. Among the ambiguous, everyone is a brother… I like the fluid character of Orlando in Virginia Woolf, a young Elizabethan who changes sex in the middle of the story.
DAVID CROLAND Loulou remembered a huge Duesenberg pulling up there where she lived in the country, a door opening, followed by a beautiful long leg: Mummy. And behind Mummy were two gorgeous young men. She kissed Loulou, she kissed Alexis, they said a few words, and then Maxime was chauffeured back to Paris.
JOHN RICHARDSON Loulou and Alexis were farmed out, and you know what happened? They were both, um, uh, uh, um, uh, raped, or seduced, or whatever it was, by this couple. I mean they were literally … I discussed it with Maxime, and what I didn’t like to say is, “But darling, why didn’t you do anything?” Maxime said, “Well, you know, I mean, I did what we could,” and giggled a bit. Loulou admitted it happened but made light of it. She and Maxime never showed their scars, did they? Water off a duck’s back. That whole family had a way of dismissing things lightheartedly. I never knew whether their superficial approach to appalling matters was nonchalance or they were hiding their true feelings. Most people would have gone to the police, there’d have been a court case, whereas with Maxime and Loulou these things happened, and ended all right, or you forgot them … Loulou was surrounded by badness but never contaminated.
Loulou & Yves Page 5