Loulou & Yves

  JEAN-PAUL KNOTT Except for M. Bergé, no one entered the studio who didn’t work there.

  NICOLE DORIER In the bathroom on the atelier floor there was a little interior window overlooking the studio. You could see everything.

  PAULE MONORY Bergé would come into the studio, watch a fitting, chat five minutes. But I never heard him say, “No, not that”—and he wasn’t someone to hold back what he thought.

  ALYNE DE BROGLIE A sea change took place between when the house opened and I left in ’85. Women went from wanting to look chic to wanting to look young. Saint Laurent was already doing old-lady clothes when I quit. Maybe he didn’t see the road curving ahead of him. Loulou did. She went out, she saw people, she moved. He was locked up.

  I was considered a traitor for leaving. I’d had enough. Saint Laurent was in one of his low periods. I wanted to be independent, not to spend the rest of my life in this straitjacket of a couture house. I’d worked there seventeen years, but there was not even a glass of champagne to toast my departure. When I had my first child, the hospital room was filled with flowers from Saint Laurent, Bergé, the studio. I had a second child a short while after giving notice, and that time—nothing. I asked Saint Laurent to write me a reference letter. Nothing.

  To me, he was the saddest, gloomiest man on earth. He was hooked on a peppermint alcohol we used to have to buy for him. Normally, it’s for old ladies when they faint, three drops on a sugar cube, but he drank it straight. I often saw him leaning over his desk with his head in his arms, devastated. On my last day, Loulou took me aside and said, “You’ve succeeded in doing what I’ll never do: You’re leaving.”

  74 Central Saint Martins, London art school.

  75 Carrie Donovan (1928–2001), fashion editor in the Vreeland mold, minus the three-sixty vision.

  12

  Anne-Marie Muñoz, Mater Dolorosa

  LAURENCE BENAÏM Black hair framing a heavily powdered face, the solemn air of a mater dolorosa suffering heroically. There are two things you notice right away about Anne-Marie Muñoz: first, her dark red lipstick; second, the strappy platform shoes she wears summer and winter, with black voile tights. Sitting opposite her, one always feels like one is falling apart. Her bedside reading: Le Style Contre des Idées by Céline. When she comes into the studio she doesn’t drop her coat on a chair, she hangs it up, placing her suede gloves above … She’s the guardian of the temple …

  JACQUES GRANGE Yves’s genius was to have both Loulou and Anne-Marie. The three were inseparable. Anne-Marie’s loyalty and professionalism lifted Yves’s anxiety. I never felt, saw or heard of any rivalry between Anne-Marie and Loulou. Rivalry happens when you’re afraid someone’s going to take your place. That wasn’t the case.

  VIOLETA SANCHEZ Anne-Marie and Loulou were both indispensable to M. Saint Laurent, but in completely different ways. Mme. Muñoz was a moral, levelheaded presence. She knew Saint Laurent by heart, intuiting the exact moment to intervene, help or protect. She was the intermediary, firm but kind, between the studio, cabine and ateliers. Mother Superior, like in a convent.

  A fashion design studio depends for its survival on new blood. Yves and Loulou had had a preprofessional relationship; she was a copine, getting drunk till dawn together. Then they started working together, the prêt-à-porter took off and Loulou was a dose of madness, modernity and youth; the soul mate, muse, diffuser of tension and dispenser of fantasy, humor, originality, eccentricity. She didn’t brood. She teased Yves and chased the dark clouds, but was also dead serious about her job. She and Yves could joke, but work always came first, no matter what had gone on the night before. No other studio functioned the same way, except maybe Claude Montana with Béatrice Paul.

  CARLOS MUñOZ When Loulou was hired, Anne-Marie said to herself, Okay, this is what Yves wants, I’ll make do with it. I won’t create any obstacles, but I will give Loulou some structure. Little by little, Loulou found her place. Every woman at Saint Laurent was sure she and my mother were enemies, but Anne-Marie doesn’t function that way. If it crosses her mind, she blocks it out. For Anne-Marie, Loulou was her equal. The only thing that interested Anne-Marie was a beautifully made dress—one that sells. Don’t forget, she had nine years on Loulou with Yves, thirteen if you count their time together when Yves designed Dior.

  ANNE-MARIE MUñOZ I was what in a notary’s office is called un grouillot, the grunt of M. Dior’s studio. But to get the job … you had to move heaven and earth … My uncle Henri Sauguet was a friend of Christian Dior, and he was crazy enough to bring me up to Paris.

  CARLOS MUñOZ Anne-Marie was born in 1932 and started at Dior in 1951, four years before Yves. The house was four years old and had eight hundred employees. The New Look was history. Anne-Marie was an only child from the coast near Bordeaux. She didn’t have the luck to come from a milieu like Loulou’s, but rather from an extremely modest background. Her mother was practically a concierge—all right, she was a seamstress. Anne-Marie didn’t seem class-conscious, but she may have had a complex about it, though she’d never say so. Because in a couture house, who are the women who are usually closest to the couturier? The ones from “good” families. Loulou had the particule, and her grandfather was knighted. Clara Saint was an heiress. Hélène de Ludinghausen, who ran the couture salon, was a Stroganoff. Her mother fled Russia in 1917 with diamonds in her pockets to avoid having her head cut off. Hélène, Clara, Gabrielle in the press—most of the women in this maison de couture—because one always speaks of “la maison”—they’re sterile: They didn’t have children. The seamstresses, too. Anne-Marie and Loulou were exceptions.

  Henri Sauguet, Anne-Marie’s uncle, was a famous composer—he’d worked with Diaghilev—also a snob of the first degree, tirelessly social, best friends with Christian Bérard. His partner was Jacques Dupont, the scenic designer. Tonton Henri shepherded his provincial niece Anne-Marie to nightclubs in Paris, and she met or heard accounts about his brilliant circle of friends: Les Six, 76 Cocteau and Roland Petit, the choreographer and future YSL clan member.

  Anne-Marie was “enrolled” in “l’é cole Dior,” meaning she floated from department to department, filling in where needed, tidying fabrics in the studio. No apparent ambition.

  ANNE-MARIE MUñOZ I remember Raymonde Zehnacker77 saying, referring to me: “She shouldn’t be out front with us, she should stay behind the curtain, and when we need something from the ateliers, she’ll run up and get it.” It didn’t matter to me at all. I wanted one thing and one thing only: to be at Dior.

  It was collection time, I was having lunch [in the commissary] and glimpsed a young man. “Who is that boy?” I asked a friend of M. Dior. I was struck by the way he was dressed—at the time, men’s fashion was nonexistent. He wore a gray knit vest and navy blue three-button suit, very slim—and I mean slim! Almost like suits today. With his long legs, he was like a beanpole. Very short hair. One day we left work at the same time and he said, “Would you like to go for a drink?”

  I remember our first conversation… Yves mentioned The School for Wives.78 Fresh from Oran,79 he already knew everything about the theatre … A woman walked by in a pretty coat, and we talked about it for hours … As he grew, I grew … His passion is cut. He has a base, tenets that never change. He loves shoulders. A straight back. His whole idea is to elongate you, to draw you up to the skies … [For jackets,] everything is in the articulation of the sleeve. For skirts, it’s the hip.

  CARLOS MUñOZ The way the story is always told, in all the books, the movies, there were four in their clique: Yves; Anne-Marie; Victoire Doutreleau, the Dior mannequin; and Karl Lagerfeld. Karl was Pierre Balmain’s assistant. He and Anne-Marie were so close, she chose him as my godfather. He doted on me, lavishing me with books, dreaming up entertainments. One day

  we’d cross Paris in his Rolls, the next day in the Métro—Karl Lagerfeld in the Métro! Anyway, that’s how the story is always framed, four enfants de l’avant guerre.

  VICTOIRE DOUTRELEAU Anne-Marie was sh
ort and pudgy, such a wallflower, not really integrated into our band of three. Yves and Karl were never close. Ever. At all. When Dior died suddenly in ’57 and Yves was enthroned as his successor, I stayed on in the cabine.

  ANNE-MARIE MUñOZ There was a dress rehearsal … with all the mannequins. Mme. Zehnacker stuck me behind the curtain—and Yves brought me out. You have to understand the extent of his influence at Dior then. Parallel to the couture studio was a designer of objects for the boutique; Yves had prototypes of Medici vases made. He pushed his way in everywhere, sticking his nose in. He wasn’t happy just to say, “Oh, how pretty!” …

  He designed hats because he had strong ideas about them. He didn’t “plant a tree for the sake of planting a tree,” but because he had a total image of how a woman should dress.

  CARLOS MUñOZ With the skills she’d accumulated and Yves’s friendship, Anne-Marie came out of the shadows. She was the only person le petit prince had complete trust in. When he has doubts, whom does he confess to? Anne-Marie. When he goes home to Oran to design the collection, whom does he send his punch lists to? I’ve seen those letters, I have my mother’s pay stubs. Yves was afraid management would use his absence to change his designs—Anne-Marie was his spy. In 1960, he was drafted into the army, then discharged following a nervous breakdown, hospitalized and given electroshock therapy. With Pierre, the idea for the Maison Saint Laurent was born.

  YVES They put me in the Val-de-Grâce hospital … C’é tait l’horreur. They wanted to stop me from leaving, so they knocked me out with drugs. I slept in a room, alone, with people coming in and out. Crazies. Real crazies. Some fondled me. I didn’t let them get away with it. Others screamed for no reason… I was so scared that in two and a half months I used the toilet only once. At the end, I must have weighed thirty-five kilos. And I had brain trouble. The doctor who treated me said he gave me the most powerful dose of tranquilizers you can give someone. He told me, “You’ll see, you’ll come back for more.” He wasn’t wrong. I left when the military doctors signed a petition saying they were no longer responsible for me … The Dior stockholders wanted to send me to the London branch. I refused and quit.

  CARLOS MUñOZ Anne-Marie had gone to Guy Laroche, also helping Karl with his freelance work. One of them was going to hire her—Yves beat Karl to it, in 1963, the year after Yves opened on rue Spontini.

  DANIELLE LUQUET DE SAINT GERMAIN Without Anne-Marie, Yves’s career never would have lasted as long as it did.

  ————————

  NICOLE DORIER Loulou was the only one in the house besides Pierre Bergé who addressed him as “Yves.” I don’t think M. Saint Laurent and Mme. Muñoz even tutoyaient each other outside of work, for fear of getting in the habit and slipping up in front of us.

  LOULOU I wasn’t intimidated by Yves when I began working with him … In this couture house where everyone vouvoyaient everyone, I was the only one to tutoyer Yves and Pierre, because I’d met him them as friends before working with them. In France, the business of tutoiement and vouvoiement has a great deal of importance in one’s relationships. The fact of using tu with them gave me a lighter and friendlier role … [Yves is] like a young uncle. I don’t say “brother” because that implies we’re on the same level and less respect.

  INÈS DE LA FRESSANGE Loulou and I had similar jobs—both combined work and friendship. Karl and I could spend hours in fittings, then go out for dinner or away for the weekend. I was maybe the only one in the studio to tutoieait him, a sign that you’re more or less on the same level. Everyone who worked with Yves felt a need to protect him and was in love with him. Karl inspires admiration. Everyone finds him funny, cultivated, fascinating. But they aren’t in love with him.

  PAULE MONORY Mme. Muñoz’s closeness to Saint Laurent was more maternal, whereas Loulou was more like a little sister to him. A pal.

  FRANÇOISE PICOLI No one was as close to Saint Laurent as Loulou, not even Mme. Muñoz.

  JüRGEN DOERING Loulou was more direct with Saint Laurent than Anne-Marie, more aller-aller: the buddy. Anne-Marie had known Saint Laurent since she was twenty-three and he was nineteen, and she still almost always called him “Monsieur.” Even dead, she vousvoie him. She was like a nanny or big sister, watchful, the maman he could complain to: “I’m tired, I’m fed up.”

  Anne-Marie’s was a position of power, more so than Loulou’s; she operated at a higher remove. Without reprimands or flare-ups, Anne-Marie drove things through so at the end there was a product. She managed with nobility: “This is your job, now off you go. Do it.” That was it. She was the boss, the éminence grise, the organizational brains with ultimate responsibility.

  BRUNO MÉNAGER As the collection came together, Anne-Marie noticed if there was a hole. “Perhaps a few more dresses, Monsieur.” “There doesn’t seem to be quite enough evening, Monsieur.” If trousers were needed, M. Saint Laurent drew them, or Loulou and I did, following his mood and line for the season. If Anne-Marie accepted our models, they were put into production, but only then were they shown to M. Saint Laurent, who approved them or not. It wasn’t easy, because no one could know he hadn’t designed the entire collection. I did a couture bolero embroidered with sheaves of wheat in gold thread, but couldn’t be in the room when M. Lemairé, the embroiderer, came to show the sample, Loulou had to bring it to me to okay, lest he find out. By the time I started, in 1984, it had been a long time since M. Laurent drew the miniature figures for the collection boards. That was one of my jobs, drawing in his style, the style of Cocteau. It’s vain of me … my drawings for the Braque collection were published as his own in the oeuvres complè tes. Just a little side note.

  VIOLETA SANCHEZ Anne-Marie and Loulou acknowledged each other’s territory, knowing that if she owned it, there was good reason. Yet Anne-Marie had the courtesy to allow Loulou her opinion about something in her domain, and vice versa. Both had exquisite manners and lived by the law of diplomacy.

  PAQUITA PAQUIN The culture of Saint Laurent was such that you never heard about Loulou and Anne-Marie’s differences. They never uttered a negative word about each other. As women, they were complete opposites. Every collection generated resentments, I imagine, but working for the glorification of the brand, they united.

  CARLOS MUñOZ If you worked for Saint Laurent, you worked for Saint Laurent. The current concept of lending your artistic identity to a brand didn’t exist. You gave your talent and savoir-faire, but you were anonymous and kept your mouth shut.

  MARIE-DOMINIQUE LELIèVRE In the beginning, Anne-Marie worked eighteen-hour days and had two children with barely anyone noticing. She’d been Yves’s directrice du studio at Dior and had the same position when he set up on his own. She was his Raymonde Zehnacker.

  CHRISTIAN DIOR [Mme. Zehnacker’s] serene appearance concealed an acute vigilance and sensitivity to every passing trend of fashion. She was to become my second self—or to be more accurate, my other half. She is my exact complement: she plays Reason to my Fantasy, Order to my Imagination, Discipline to my Freedom, Foresight to my Recklessness, and she knows how to introduce peace into an atmosphere of contention …

  MARIE-DOMINIQUE LELIèVRE Ready-to-wear—manufacturing—was totally new territory for Saint Laurent. Someone had to figure out how to reproportion the prototypes so there was a standard thirty-six, a forty-two. That task fell to Anne-Marie. There was only one designated Rive Gauche mannequin in the cabine when the line launched in 1968, Danielle Luquet de Saint Germain. The entire first collection was made on her.

  DIDIER GRUMBACH Historically, Saint Laurent was the first Paris fashion house to employ a product manager: Anne-Marie Muñoz. She decided which manufacturers produced which pieces, based on who would do the best job for the best price.

  LAURENCE BENAÏM She does her job so well that certain people say in a low voice, “When Mme. Muñ oz isn’t here, Yves knows how to use the telephone” … When there are a lot of butterflies and things start flying, there’s Loulou in the air. But the straight line,
l’esprit tailleur, that’s Anne-Marie … You have to see [her and Saint Laurent] together, plunged in their mysterious evaluations … hesitating between four wool crêpes, rejecting a duchess satin as too “hollow,” a grain de poudre as too “flabby,” another as too “hard.” They can spend ten minutes choosing the perfect white.

  KATELL LE BOURHIS She was the high priestess of grain de poudre, lifting a sample to her nose and sniffing it like a hunting dog, closing her eyes and inhaling with a pleasure that was almost erotic.

  PAULE MONORY Saint Laurent liked to his see his clothes live off the runway on real women. Employees were given an allowance to buy from the Rive Gauche collection. The amount depended on your position. Loulou went many times over her quota, which was only right. In a milieu where appearance is everything, she had enormous discipline, every day a different look …

  BRUNO MÉNAGER If Loulou was a pageant, Anne-Marie had a uniform: black, navy or gray skirt suit; turtleneck; black tights; chunky rings. She was not especially narcissistic; Loulou, yes.

  AUDREY SECNAZI They had unlimited wardrobes—obviously, they could take whatever they wanted—and paid accounts with a taxi service. Anne-Marie and Loulou were liked and respected by everyone at avenue Marceau: personnages. It would have been wrong for them to take the Métro like everyone else. M. Bergé was absolutely aware of how important their moral support and friendship were to M. Saint Laurent. With others—Gabrielle Buchaert, Hélène de Ludinghausen—he was controlling, but not with Loulou and Anne-Marie. Protected by M. Saint Laurent, they were not to be touched. Honestly, I never heard one word spoken louder than another between Bergé and either woman.