Loulou & Yves

  [Yves] was as shy as I was … Bergé was quite grown-up and clear-headed, but Yves was more my type. He was sillier and had more of the child in him. We bonded instantly … I also thought Pierre Bergé was the most French person one could imagine. My father was half-French, half-Irish, but I’d never known any French people …

  INÈS DE LA FRESSANGE Saint Laurent was always timid, but in the sixties a lot lighter and funnier than the image we have of him later, reading Proust and staring at his Matisses. He was often in Saint-Tropez then, partying with Lagerfeld, Jacques de Bascher,55 and Antonio.56 Pierre played father to this band of ungovernable children who annoyed the hell out of him. Pierre wore a suit, and they smoked joints—and made fun of him.

  THADÉE KLOSSOWSKI DE ROLA In the beginning, Yves loved the hippie de luxe londonienne in Loulou … [She was] ultra-avant-garde and immensely charming. She found our band bourgeois and rather conventional. Right away we had the feeling we were from the same world … [But] the intellectual conversations escaped her. She had trouble following. The witty remarks, the literary allusions …

  FRANÇOIS-MARIE BANIER She reminded me of Proust’s “jeunes filles en fleurs” or the young girls Burne-Jones painted.

  BETTY CATROUX Back then, Loulou was very English hippie, in long skirts that looked a bit like the curtains. But on her they were chic. What’s going on here? What is this? I asked myself. But she was so sympathique.

  MARY RUSSELL I met Loulou at this time through Fernando. She had no place to stay, so she stayed with me—I was living in César’s old atelier in the thirteenth. Loulou had no money, she weighed eighty pounds and was fey, like a third sex, between a girl and a boy. I’d already known Maxime. My father was a navy man, stationed in Nice in the fifties. Maxime was over in Èze with the great fabric designer Ken Scott. My mother was quite mad, taking me to nightclubs with Ken when I was fifteen. I just sat there while they drank themselves under the table.

  Loulou was never pretty. She didn’t have anything her mother had, except alcoholism, unfortunately. She was damaged. I’m Irish, I know about alcoholics, my first husband died young of alcoholism. I used to drink. I haven’t had a drink in years.

  A friend of my mother’s knew Mrs. Vreeland, and when we returned from Nice to the States, it was arranged for me, an eighteen-year-old newlywed, to see her at Bazaar. Vreeland said, “I love the way the head sits on the neck. Now what is it you would like to do, my dear? I’ll make some calls.” I didn’t know I was being discovered. I was on Glamour with Serena Russell and Amy Greene, and Ali MacGraw was on Bazaar. Amy was married to the photographer Milton Greene, and Serena was the granddaughter of the Duke?—the Duke of Marlborough.

  In the mid-sixties, Glamour needed someone to open a Paris office. Yves and Pierre were the first people I met. We were inseparable. Loulou arrived at my apartment with a pillowcase full of rags. Rags, do you understand? These were her clothes. She didn’t even bother to wash them. Walking around Paris in her bare feet, she looked like a million bucks.

  MAXIME DE LA FALAISE It’s a sort of rags-to-riches thing. All we had were rags, and Loulou could turn them into a whole new look. She was the best-dressed woman with a safety pin.

  VICKY TIEL Mia Fonssagrives and I opened our Paris boutique in 1968, bankrolled by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Mia was living with the designer Louis Féraud. Louis was the son of a baker, and when the riots broke out that year, the first thing he did was run out and stock up on flour! Mia’s half-brother, Tom, Irving Penn’s son, was dating Loulou. She would turn up at our shop, jumping up and down, very excited, looking for Tom. “Where’s Tom? Where’s Tom?!” I didn’t understand what he was doing with such a mousy-looking girl.

  GILLES DUFOUR I knew Yves before I knew Karl Lagerfeld. I was unattached, a beau garç on who didn’t want to be stuck in one group and was in a position to choose. I was invited everywhere, to Fernando’s tea parties, and to the ones Pierre and Yves gave on place Vauban, before they moved to rue de Babylone. It was a very tight, closed group: Loulou, Fernando, Yves, Thadée, Talitha Getty, Dado Ruspoli and his wife, Nancy de Charbonnières. Charlotte Aillaud was the sister of Juliette Gréco. Clara Saint handled press for Rive Gauche. Zizi Jeanmaire was starring in music hall. Frankly, I was a bit bourgeois for this crowd. Pierre and Yves invited me to Marrakech, but I couldn’t go just like that—I was still living with my parents! Pierre wrote me: “Little Gillou will grow up if he doesn’t always turn his back on his friends and if les evolutions mondaines don’t turn his head.” He wrote that because, since there was nothing going on in my life—no girlfriend, no boyfriend, no job—I was very social … summers on Fire Island with Loulou; Berry; Stephen Burrows, the designer; Egon von Furstenberg before he married Diane; the Warhol crowd: Pat Ast, 57 Jed58 and Jay Johnson.59 Later, when Yves was looking for an assistant, I showed my drawings to Pierre, but he said I didn’t have enough experience. Still, they were always exceedingly kind to me. It was the fact that I knew Pierre and Yves that made Karl want to work with me. Now that I don’t, I see Pierre again.

  LOULOU As the child of divorced parents, I was fascinated by the passion between Yves and Pierre, who had already been together nine years. That seemed an eternity to me, and I thought it was amazing that they were so crazy about each other, and argued, and made up … The thing that charmed me more than anything was their relationship, before I realized Yves’s talent.

  THADÉE KLOSSOWSKI DE ROLA I fell in love with [Loulou]. But everyone in our group fell in love with Loulou, she was grace itself.

  LOULOU After that stay in Paris, I went to New York, where I spent several years working with Halston and Giorgio Sant’Angelo60 … I’ve always worked in fashion, designing fabrics and collections for this one and that.

  55 Jacques de Bascher (1951–1989), the love object of Saint Laurent and Lagerfeld, and at the same time, as documented in The Beautiful Fall by Alicia Drake (2007). Lagerfeld tried, unsuccessfully, to block publication of the book in France.

  56 Antonio Lopez (1943–1987), fashion illustrator who greatly influenced Lagerfeld in the seventies.

  57 Pat Ast (1941–2001), plus-size Halston model who appeared in Paul Morrissey’s Heat.

  58 Jed Johnson (1948–1996), Warhol’s decorator lover, who died in the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996.

  59 Former model who runs the design firm founded by his twin brother, Jed.

  60 Giorgio Sant’Angelo (1933–1989), Italian-born, Argentina-raised designer who referenced Gypsies with his tie-dyed chiffons and North American Indians with beads, fringe and feathers.

  10

  The Years Between, 1968–1972

  HAMISH BOWLES Loulou moved to Manhattan and proceeded to take the city by storm. She was absolutely singular, fearless, intriguing and provided a walking embodiment of what real style—personal, quirky, inspiring—could be.

  GERARD MALANGA I didn’t see Loulou again until a year after the picnic, in 1969. Pre-Raphaelite Dream had its premiere that fall. She’d come back to New York with her new boyfriend: Fernando Sanchez. At first I felt a little uncomfortable because, you can imagine, I mean, from my viewpoint, for Loulou to come back with Fernando, I was confused about that. But basically it all got ironed out. If she hadn’t gone to Paris and met him, would we have … ? That’s hard to say, like Monday-morning quarterbacking.

  JANO HERBOSCH Fernando’s father was Spanish, his mother Belgian, the absolute chicest woman. Yull, she was called. Fernando worshipped her. Her family, the Herbosches, were wealthy. A Belgian transport fortune: barges. I never found out what Mr. Sanchez did. Fernando was born in Antwerp in 1935 and lived in Spain until his father died, until he was ten, when he moved with Yull back to Belgium. He had polio as a boy and wore special boots.

  ERIC WILSON Mr. Sanchez was very thin, always dressed in black and heavily made up to cover childhood scars from polio, casting a vampirish silhouette.

  DIANE VON FURSTENBERG He had a face that had suffered.

&n
bsp; FERNANDO SANCHEZ [As a child,] I loved A Thousand and One Nights, and all those children’s stories in which the Christian prince was always taken away by a Moor. I was surrounded by flamenco music; and the cante jondo singing in Spain.

  CHRISTOPHE DECARPENTRIE Fernando was unbearable, such a queen, so mincing and affected. Mon dieu, what a pouf! The Herbosches were a grand Anveroise family. Yull was my mother’s best friend. When she married Sanchez, her little Spanish tailor, her father was furious, he threw them out on the street. They lived in an attic. My mother left food baskets at their door. Fernando was born into this misery. That’s why he never wanted to admit he was Belgian and told everyone he was Spanish. His childhood was a horror. He never ever spoke of it. Belgium was still a monarchic society then. Sanchez was your maid’s name. The Catholic hautes bourgeoises of Antwerp spoke only French and were spoken to only in French by their servants; Fernando never uttered a word of Flemish. After the little tailor died, Yull, with Fernando, took up her life of grand luxe again. But he never integrated because of this difficulty not to have a father, of having un pè re unconnnu. The snubs he suffered … Even today, Belgium is the most regressive country in the world. Until 2000, Jews were banned from the Royal Antwerp Golf Club.

  JANO HERBOSCH Yull took Fernando to Paris when he was seventeen. Jacques Fath looked at his drawings and advised him to go to the school run by the Chambre Syndicale, the couture trade group. It’s where Fernando met Yves and their lifelong friendship began. They were classmates. Afterward, Fernando went to Maggy Rouff, 61 Yves went to Dior, and then when Dior died and Yves took over, he hired Fernando to design lingerie for the licensees. In 1960, Fernando got an apartment in New York and had more than ten great years doing furs for Revillon.

  Fernando hated his Flemish background so much, when Yull told him he had an American cousin—me—living in Antwerp, it was like waving a braid of garlic in front of Dracula! But when my husband went off the deep end and I moved back to New York, literally under the cover of night, it was Fernando who gave me a job. His idea of lingerie that could be worn out took off in the seventies, when models wore the satin nightgowns he designed for Ensuite to discothèques.

  LOULOU I was saved by Fernando … He looked after me … in New York when I became one of the Warhol girls. There was such a mafia of us … But you know I never hung around the Factory much. They liked best the type of person who wanted to marry a millionaire, but I could never be that kind of person. …

  FERNANDO SANCHEZ [Loulou is] not like all these hard fashion ladies who have nothing else and are just sort of masturbating with fashion … She’s made to encounter an extraordinarily talented man, push him forward, marry him and have children … We constantly reinvented ourselves [in New York]. We were groovy. [Central] Park was a happening … She continued to express the moment. She is a bit like a tall tree with deep roots and its top in the stars. She is always divinely right … Three pins and two pieces of cloth, and she has four ravishing evening dresses.

  MANOLO BLAHNIK She dresses from the cutting room floor.

  DAVID CAMMELL After Performance, I’d hoped Lenny Holzer would finance a film Donald and I wanted to make. Lenny was a real estate mogul famously married to Baby Jane; Loulou would’ve known them through Andy. Lenny was mainlining, which, outside of jazz musicians, was a novelty then, and seemed to own most of New York. He had a fish tank filled with ants in his office, and he’d just sit there watching them multiply and kill each other. He had an empty skyscraper somewhere, and Donald and I moved into the penthouse. There was no furniture, just two mattresses on the floor, but every morning a black butler came in. “Good day, Mr. Cammell, may I bring you coffee?” Loulou came to call and she and Donald had it off on the roof against the skyline, very dramatic. But I tried to stay clear of Donald’s sex life.

  DESMOND FITZGERALD Letter to Veronica Milner, August 22, 1969 Life has been a little difficult & Louise is now here [in London] & I saw her last week. I think she will give a statement so all with any luck should be easily dealt with. I am in constant touch with the lawyers+though we cannot get divorced immediately I will have all the necessary evidence & am being very careful. Poor thing she seems in a mess but hopes to get a big part in a film. I hope she does. I think it just as well that all is over …

  LOULOU I divorced and led a bachelor life for ages, a very wild life, staying out all night, exaggerating like mad. I am actually very resistant, but every now and then my body suddenly decides that it has to have a rest.

  ————————

  Loulou in “tip-dyed sable, a voluminous cape, about as restrained as a rug,” by Fernando Sanchez for Revillon, Harper’s Bazaar, February 1970. The drawing is almost certainly by Emily Chan. © Courtesy of Hearst Magazines.

  With Fernando Sanchez in the pre-Ricardo, pre-Thadée between years, 1968 to 1972, when Fernando and Loulou were sleeping together, or trying to. The photographer was none other than Roger Prigent, who renounced shooting Vogue and Barbra Streisand album covers to become an influential dealer in French Empire antiques. © Jano Herbosch. Courtesy of the holder.

  ALLEN ROSENBAUM So when does Maxime pick up with Loulou and Alexis again? When they’re amusing and glamorous and in vogue. They all lived together with John on Riverside Drive. I was at the apartment all the time, part of the family. Loulou always walked around topless, casually; it wasn’t exhibitionism. I never had a sense of boyfriends, not even of escorts. One never heard the children mention their father, but they seemed to adore Maxime, no signs they’d been neglected.

  MARISA BERENSON I don’t know how easy it was to be Maxime’s daughter. Can you imagine being put in a foster home by your mother and still having a relationship with her? Pretty strange, no? I mean, for a woman to do that to her child … But it’s not like Loulou shunned Maxime. She was always in her life.

  THADÉE KLOSSOWSKI DE ROLA Loulou always reproached her mother for her unhappy childhood.

  MAXIME DE LA FALAISE My closest friend is Loulou. If she weren’t my daughter, she would probably still be my closest friend.

  JOHN STEFANIDIS Loulou certainly didn’t bear a grudge. I’m sure she minded about it all her life, people do. But she didn’t make a thing of it. She was an exemplary daughter, in later years looking after her mother beautifully …

  CHRISTOPHER GIBBS Loulou was amazingly supportive of her maddeningly, slightly grotesque, once-beautiful mother. I cannot imagine anything more awful than having Maxime as a mother. She was well aware of her monstrous nature. Not that she regretted it.

  ROBERT COUTURIER Maxime was very matter-of-fact. “I was a bad mother? So what?”

  NICKY SAMUEL I adored Maxime, but there are lots of people one adores whom one doesn’t necessarily want as one’s mother.

  DAVID CROLAND Loulou had an incredible ability to forgive and realign herself to events she couldn’t change. She was even protective of Maxime. I once ventured a remark, and Loulou cut me off—“Don’t talk about my mother like that.” And I thought, You know what? Good for you. Loulou was a peacemaker. Peace at any cost.

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  ALLEN ROSENBAUM Emotions didn’t exist. These were people whose lives were so completely devoted to style, it replaced and displaced everything else. I couldn’t keep up. I was a schnook, tagging along in my poor-boy sweaters. They went out together as a family, dressed up in velvet frock coats. It was a time when nothing was too outrageous, rings on every finger … Loulou and Maxime were always changing the rules and upping the ante to fool you. One step ahead. Loulou intimidated me. If you didn’t measure up stylewise … the yardstick was always style. She wasn’t hostile, but she certainly didn’t waste any energy on me. Maxime’s greatest insult, her most damning remark was, “How middle-class.” There was no greater sin. God help you if you were going to someone’s house for dinner and you brought a bottle of wine. She’d be devastated. Loulou took on a lot of that, too.

  MAXIME DE LA FALAISE It’s very middle cl
ass to be upset. I mean, it’s alright to be truly furious.

  ALLEN ROSENBAUM There were games between the women. They behaved like girls in high school, and it could get nasty. I was Rhoda’s date once. John and Maxime were going to a party at Dina Merrill and Cliff Robertson’s, and they asked me to accompany her. It was always “darling, darling, darling” between Maxime and Rhoda, and such meanness, you know? “Darling, do you have an evening bag I can borrow?” Maxime had an entire drawer filled with them, each carefully wrapped in tissue paper. “Oh no, darling, I only have …” Do you know the famous story? Maxime was a child, she and Rhoda are out driving, the car comes to a screeching halt and Maxime falls forward and cuts her eye. There’s blood everywhere. The first and only thing Rhoda says is, “Oh dear, your beauty is ruined.” It left a scar, a faint white line you could still see.

  There’s a Beaton photograph of Oswald Birley in his studio, Rhoda in an hourglass dress from the height of her Ballets Russes period, looking like the Evil Queen in Snow White, and Maxime, in Chinese brocade, staring up at her in absolute terror. Oswald’s back is to them. They were an utterly dysfunctional family. Beaton’s picture is one of the great psychological portraits. I became an expert on style because of Maxime and Loulou. Not a practitioner, but a judge.