Loulou & Yves

  MARIE-GILONE DE RIQUET DE CARAMAN-CHIMAY There was an engagement party for Loulou in Paris, unlike any I’ve ever been to. Usually, the couple can’t let go of each other. I don’t think I even saw M. FitzGerald.

  MAXIME Letters to Veronica Milner, Summer 1966 The wedding dress is all planned+ [Louise] will have fitting in mid September. I found a 19 [th-century] wedding dress in an antique shop in N.Y in beautiful creamy satin like the veil—We are using the skirt of this with an Irish lace top—I suppose one shouldn’t mix Irish and Brussels lace but the colors all melt in and it looks romantic and beautiful. Mme. Ré bé, famous in Paris for coiffures de marié e is making a little sort of beehive in creamy pearls to suspend the veil which we are draping over one shoulder “a l’irelandaise”! … and we have ordered matching beaded crepe shoes from Italy … Alain+I found a beautiful short grey dress [for Louise], hand embroidered gauze so that it is iridescent with a pale, bright pink hem+sash—also at Ré bé who is the embroiderer of all the couture in Paris—It cost a fortune but will look divine for the ball. We went to the wholesale couture place where I used to design and ordered her some things—a charming bright red wool dress+jacket—a white cocktail dress and a silver one and 2 wool dresses—also got her some slacks and matching sweaters—a lovely ball-gown being made by “my little man” incorporating the lovely beaded top that Rachel38 gave her—he is also making one+2 little at home or small dance outfits—at another wholesale place we ordered a corduroy coat+suit and some attractive bits+pieces and I’m afraid we really went for broke in shoes (she seems to have none, says Desmond) fantastically beautiful that will not be made again—I went spinning around Paris leaving deposits like a paper chase … I think I’ve gone a bit overboard on the trousseau. Alas—the 1900 wedding dress fell apart at the cleaners so it now has to be recopied in new material.

  JOSÉPHINE RINALDI I remember a vintage gown—and I don’t think it was Captain Molyneux. It was so fragile, it had to be completely resewn. Even so, bits hung off at the church. But Loulou already had enough allure to take charge of this poor tired frock. Her cousin Robin and the other boy attendants wore velvet jerkins and white tights. The Guinness children were in the wedding party, too. The knight was in high mufti, in his family’s colors and coat of arms.

  Lady Birley hosted the bal de mariés celebrating the marriage of her granddaughter, Loulou, to Desmond FitzGerald. Her name was left off the English version of the invitation but topped the French version.

  Clockwise from top left: Lady Davina Crichton, daughter of the 6th Earl of Erne; Prince Rudolf Lowenstein, son of Prince Rupert, the Rolling Stones’ business manager; Desmond; unidentified bridesmaid; Loulou; and Robin Birley. The bride, 19. Loulou and Maxime, who ordered Loulou’s coiffure de mariée from Mme. Rébé, Paris. Maxime, Loulou and Desmond on the receiving line. © The Madam FitzGerald. Courtesy of the holder.

  The wedding party included India Jane Birley, Loulou’s cousin (bottom right). © The Madam FitzGerald. Courtesy of the holder.

  The heroic task of merging and managing three guest lists—Loulou’s, Lady Birley’s and Maxime’s—fell to Lady Birley’s secretary.

  Loulou and her father, Alain, on her wedding day, October 6, 1966, from an album recently uncovered at Glin. © The Madam FitzGerald. Courtesy of the holder.

  Loulou and her famously deadbeat, disaffected parents. © The Madam FitzGerald. Courtesy of the holder.

  Clockwise from upper left: Raine, Countess of Dartmouth (later Countess Spencer—“Acid Raine”—when she became Princess Diana’s stepmother); Lindy, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, dancing with Desmond FitzGerald; Lady Birley, Loulou’s grandmother; Prince Rudolf Loewenstein. © The Madam FitzGerald. Courtesy of the holder.

  Clockwise from upper left: Desmond FitzGerald and his mother, “the knightmère,” Veronica Milner; the architectural historian Maurice Craig and Garech de Brún, whose mother, Oonagh, was one of the three “Golden Guinness Girls”; the only known photograph of Maxime, Rhoda and Loulou, taken at Loulou and Desmond’s bal de mariés. The ball was held in Oswald Birley’s former studio at 62 Wellington Road, St. John’s Wood. © The Madam FitzGerald. Courtesy of the holder.

  A meticulous inventory recorded Loulou and Desmond’s wedding gifts, matched to the guests who gave them. Crustware and wastepaper bins were popular.

  CHRISTOPHER GIBBS The wedding at St. Mary’s in Chelsea was followed by a dinner at Claridge’s, given by Desmond’s mother, and then a great festivity, frolicking all night. A lot of dope. Possibly a touch of acid.

  Rhoda, Veronica, Maxime, Loulou and Desmond all contributed to the guest list for the ball, which was at least partly paid for by Alain. The list was an aviary of the brightly-feathered drawn from Jennifer’s Diary, the Bottin Mondain, the Social Register, the Almanach de Gotha and A Geneal-ogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland: Cecil Beaton; Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner; John Tavener, organist at the nuptial mass; Sacheverell Sitwell; Lady Diana Cooper; John Fowler; Osbert Lancaster; Maïmé Arnodin and Denise Fayolle, future architects of Saint Laurent’s Opium perfume campaign; Kitty Lillas; Douglas Auchincloss, first cousin once removed of Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jacqueline Kennedy and Gore Vidal’s stepfather; Patrick Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield, photographing for various Vogues; the Hon. Lady Lindsay, formerly Loelia, Duchess of Westminster; Mary, Duchess of Devonshire; Lady St. Just, who made a career of her amiti é amoureuse with Tennessee Williams; Charles de Gaulle, the general’s grandson; John Wyndham, 1st Baron Egremont, whose daughter, Carlyn, would develop a freakish connection to Maxime in the nineties; Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, later and more hatefully styled “Acid Raine,” when she became Princess Diana’s stepmother; a dusting of ambassadors. Camilla Shand, Loulou’s exact contemporary, was thirty-nine years away from marrying Prince Charles.

  The fashion in gifts for newlyweds of Loulou and Desmond’s station in 1966 was evidently for the prosaic. If you knew Loulou and were taking bets on the FitzGeralds’ marriage, the portents weren’t good: a traveling rug, a spice rack, a suite of bird prints, a paperweight, an iron casserole. Several guests gave Crustware, a hideous short-lived Wedgwood pattern with piecrust edges. Princess Pless presented the couple with a wastepaper bin, and she wasn’t the only one.

  TRIXIE STAPLETON Letter to Delves Molesworth, November 7 and 9, 1966 Louise tottered in[to the church] very beautifully while Desmond ambled about the altar winking at her … Louise’s entrance was heralded by little trumpeters & The March of the Queen of Sheba … We were introduced by midget announcers at the reception … The Daily Express must be congratulated on their triumphant efforts to get a picture of Desmond looking completely cloud-seven STONED! … As I shook Desmond’s hand … I pressed a dear little grey fur mouse into his hand & I believe it pleased him that the little mouse clasped a block of hash (O, eastern dreams, but who needs those if you’re Irish) between its small paws. Anyway there was quite a scene around the wedding-cake over that, Louise shrieking & me smug & Dez a little potted-hysteric … When we arrived [at the ball] I was horrified by the amount of diamonds & swish furs & so on … And there were raven-wild women singing of the waterfalls of Glin … Munchkins filled us with champagne till 4am … It really was the three ages of Man with reference to Louise, her mother & grandmother—they are all so beautiful; Louise so frail & new, her mother very regal & with an aura of tragedy & enigma, a “Phaedra” sort of person, & Lady Birley (beautiful—but indescribable politely).

  VOGUE39 “A Unique, Happy Wedding Ball Given for the Knight of Glin and His Bride in London,” December 1966 The Queen of the Tinkers sang, three Irish musicians played jigs, and a rock team named the Discords seemed, in their orange shirts and green ties, as dim as peahens among the peacock glory of the guests… Filled with the paintings of the late Sir Oswald Birley, the house in St. John’s Wood looked like a Galsworthy setting peopled with the new British young. Girls in pants suits. Men in ruffles. The mini-est skirts, long imposing satins, and something close to
blue jeans: All were there… Unlike a wedding reception, this party blazing into the night resembled a French bal de mariés. At heart, it was one of Lady Birley’s admired parties—warm, gay, amusing, with undertones of intellectualism, of the arts, and an echo of eccentricity—and with marvelous food, prepared in part by Lady Birley, and by her grandson Alexis de La Falaise, who cooks in his uncle Mark Birley’s famous London nightclub, Annabel’s.

  DESMOND FITZGERALD Undated letter to Veronica and Ray Milner, written aboard the Queen Mary My dear Mama & Ray Our Mexican [honeymoon] junket was the greatest fun and we saw an immense amount—tottering up pyramids, flying in hair razing rain with jungle air strips to see romantic temples in the shadow of orange trees and clear streams of water. Then colonial churches & a few days by the sea in Yucatan where we ate fish on the beach and swam in coral reefs and looked at the brightly colored tropical fish … Maxime has finally left Bernard.

  GRACE CODDINGTON Loulou and the knight were just married when I ran into them in New York at a Bazaar shooting for a story on couples. I was with my boyfriend Albert, a photographer’s agent. I knew Loulou as a girl around London, but I wasn’t that up—not in her social world of lords and ladies.

  JEANINE LARMOTH “British Invasion,” Harper’s Bazaar, February 1967 Albert Koski … with his fiancé e, Grace Coddington, a London model. Together, they are part of that swinging aristocracy whose members launch fashion … Desmond Fitz-Gerald … and the Madam Fitz-Gerald … on their way back from a honeymoon spent scouring for ruins in Mexico and Yucatan … Louise’s legs fly under mini-kilts … Against the face of aristocratic tradition, the Fitz-Geralds are completely caught up in the pace of today.

  DESMOND FITZGERALD Undated letter to Veronica Milner Louise is going back to ballet school & going to take typing lessons as well …

  GILLES DUFOUR Marisa Berenson and her sister, Berry, were living with their grandmother, Elsa Schiaparelli, in that famous apartment in Paris on rue de Berri. Berry and I were teenagers together, attending the same coming-out balls, so I would see Mme. Schiaparelli when I went to pick Berry up. She was on the first plane that struck the World Trade Center on September 11. I’d go to London on weekends and through Berry met Loulou, an “it” girl, as we say nowadays. She had a lot of designer friends: Michael Fish, Celia Birtwell, Ossie Clark. Ossie had been David Hockney’s lover, then married Celia. At the cinema one night, Loulou turned up in cotte de mailles—real medieval chain mail—in the middle of Piccadilly. As she wasn’t wearing any underwear, her nipples showed through. When Loulou wore a chiffon dress by Ossie with a heavy Irish sweater, it worked because it wasn’t a show. It was sincere.

  DESMOND FITZGERALD I’ve never seen anyone so captivated by fashion. [Loulou] was so excited by dressing up. Any excuse and out would come peacock feathers, strange belts, stage jewelry. Not that she spent a lot of money on clothes. It was all theatrical fantasy: She invented her own.

  BOBBY PELIGRY I’ve seen Loulou carry off a dress with trains of fox plumage. Well, carrying that off is like eating crayfish at a dinner table. Either you can or you can’t, and Loulou can.

  DAVID MLINARIC During the sixties “blossoming,” or whatever we called it, no group had more fun than ours: Loulou, Desmond, Christopher Gibbs, Jane and Victoria Ormsby Gore,40 Christopher Sykes,41 Mark Palmer,42 Catherine Tennant,43 Victoria Yorke. Victoria was my assistant, daughter of the 9th Earl of Hardwicke. Loulou wasn’t called Loulou back then, she was Louise. We were all vain but camera-shy—it wasn’t an aspiration to be in Vogue or Queen. If you got fifty pounds for a shoot, you went to lunch at Alvaro’s for seven and sixpence. Money was not the aim. All the fashion shops were designed on a budget. I did Blade’s. If there was a hideous staircase, you simply painted each baluster a different color. Michael Rainey, Jane’s husband, owned Hung on You. Nigel Waymouth, before marrying Victoria, had Granny Takes a Trip. One went to Mr. Fish for the most exquisite jerseys, and to girls’ hairdressers to have one’s hair blown. Mine was Plantagenet length. Obviously, there were occasions on buses when people shouted, “Get your hair cut!” Billings & Edmonds made me an aubergine suit with black piping, and I was asked to leave the Cavalry Club for wearing a pink Turnbull & Asser shirt. Annabel’s turned me out for wearing a white suit from Blade’s; it’s now in the V&A. Loulou’s uncle Mark opened Annabel’s in 1963, and it became the most exclusive nightclub in the world.

  JOHN STEFANIDIS The kind of luxury he represented was not necessarily part of English life before Mark. He always had the best, whether it was bread-and-butter pudding or a special ham from the Abruzzi mountains. Of course, it was very unusual to take those things, the cheese or whatever it was, to the extent he did. That was Mark’s persona, and living life on his own terms at Thurloe Lodge, his house in London, not going to other people’s clubs and eating other people’s food, setting his own standards and not wavering from them. He was very rather cold and difficult to approach. Slightly aloof.

  LADY ANNABEL GOLDSMITH Mark really wanted his children to be born at age twenty-one. [When Robin was born, he said,] “Darling, you must wake up. There must have been a mistake. I think you’ve been given the wrong baby—this one is simply hideous.” I can’t blame him for not being a brilliant father, because he never really asked to have any of them …

  Mark openly preferred dogs to people—including his family. Once, at lunch at Thurloe, Blitz, his Rhodesian Ridgeback, licked Joan Collins’s ankle from under the table. “Take that dog out of here!” Collins screamed. Blitz retreated to the hallway, where Mark implored his pet to forgive him. “I’m so sorry, Blitz. That bitch will never set foot in this house again.” Another time, Mark barred a member from Annabel’s because the man had been less than polite with one of his staff: “I can always replace you, but not a waiter.” The club attracted “the right sort of young,” was a place where you could see the Supremes—the original Supremes—in a space smaller than some of the patrons’ drawing rooms.

  MIN HOGG What made Annabel’s so innovative for its time: There had been no such thing as complete comfort in a nightclub—well, maybe El Morocco—nowhere you could go and sink into a delicious sofa. So Annabel’s was a revelation. Mark used to come to my office at Interiors and go through samples and pinch things. Everything in his life was scrutinized, whether a piece of fruit or a swatch of fabric. Nothing was too good.

  NICKY HASLAM Mark’s rooms had a certain grandeur dé layé e. You know the story, don’t you? Nan Kempner44 was staying at Thurloe, which is on a busy road. “I don’t hear a thing,” she said. “How do you do it?” “Swansdown,” Mark replied. Feathers were mixed into the ceiling plaster.

  NINA CAMPBELL I first met him when I was about eighteen, at my brother-in-law’s for dinner. I said to him something about Annabel’s that I thought could be better, Chinese porcelain in white vinyl vitrines. It was my very humble opinion—I was eighteen, what did I know? Mark said, “If you think you’re so clever, do it yourself.” That’s how we started working together. If you went shopping with Mark, he was so much taller, six five, and his reach so much longer and his eye so much sharper that you rarely got anything. We were at a private house sale and I spied a pair of caisses à fleurs, cachepots, if you like, square, like mini Versailles tubs in silver. I shot up underneath him just as he was going for them. I gave them to him when Rupert45 died. I didn’t know what else to do …

  ————————

  DAVID MLINARIC I helped Desmond with his flat on Pont Street. While beautiful, it was not the most comfortable: There was no heat. Maxime gave Loulou and Desmond a kitchen for their wedding, and I went with her to Habitat to choose it. None of us could afford to do anything elaborate then, and sometimes the effects were much greater than what we later did for people who had the means to do everything. The knight was a natural; he knew how to put rooms together, using the wonderful Irish furniture he’d begun collecting. I chose the upholstery, mixed the paint, cerulean for the dining room. Strong color was fashionable. Mariga Guinn
ess had painted her drawing room tomato red, the dining room yellow, the entrance hall dark green. Loulou knew her. Mariga influenced everyone who came into contact with her.

  JOHN CORNFORTH [Leixlip] was the key country house in the British Isles in the late 1950s and 1960s, the equivalent of Kelmarsh and Ditchley before the war … Ultimately it was the feeling for scale in the house and the combination of the Irish pictures and furniture with the simple decoration supported by prints, piles of books and quantities of shells that made it such a complete and convincing Irish country house, very carefully thought out but achieved with such brio and confidence that it seemed natural and not contrived. It managed to be stylish and unfussy; quite grand and yet informal and cut-back; and everywhere there was both a vivid historical air and a sense of fantasy … Shoals of American decorators proceeded to try to copy some of the ideas … Amateurs, dealers and decorators all learned from Mariga much more than they would care to admit.