Loulou & Yves

  RICARDO BOFILL The tensions in Sicily were worthy of teenagers. Being in love is a primitive illness, and like any illness, you have to get over it. Loulou was jealous. Again, people on that trip saw me as a macho. So it was, “Let’s make the macho suffer.”

  Loulou, without Thadée, came by Annabelle and Ricardo’s one night after work for a kitchen supper. She had taken special care with her hair and makeup and was looking especially glamorous. With a kind of spooky earnestness, Loulou told Annabelle, in front of Ricardo, that when she first knew her, Annabelle was complete, fully formed. Now, Loulou said, Annabelle, all of twenty-eight, had devolved into an unfortunate, undefined version of herself. Loulou had on four-inch heels that night, and they made a lot of noise on the bare parquet, waking baby Pablo. The clan read her behavior three ways: Loulou was so jealous that Annabelle had succeeded where she had failed—having a child with Ricardo—that she deliberately set Pablo to howling. Or she was giving Annabelle the finger: “You’re saddled with a baby and domestic drudgery, I’m not and look how beautiful I am.” Or she was simply throwing shade, claiming the foreground.

  RICARDO BOFILL Listen, I don’t practice armchair psychology. Heels on parquet, these are things women have in their heads! When there’s an event in your life, there’s a need to build it up and justify it. And to leave the event behind, the narrative must be coherent.

  It was obvious to the clan that whether or not Loulou wanted Ricardo back, she was going to keep him around. One lure was drugs, which, being a nonuser, especially angered Annabelle. In another episode in 1983 or 1984, a few summers after Loulou’s freaky speech to Annabelle in Paris, Annabelle and Ricardo were vacationing near Barcelona with Ricardo’s son, Ricardo Junior—“Ricardito”—then in his late teens. One day, Loulou phoned. “Je suis à Cadaqués—I’m coming to see you!” She was on holiday with Thadée but arrived alone. After dinner, Annabelle said there was a room free and invited Loulou to spend the night. The next morning, Loulou came to breakfast proud and smiling. “Wow, that was incredible!” She had fucked Ricardito. His father barely shrugged, but the boy was traumatized. Annabelle was left to pick up the pieces.

  RICARDO BOFILL Listen, we’re an open family, but to discuss this kind of thing … Loulou liked to provoke. She dreamed of having children with me, and mine were with other women. She played with Annabelle and me but wasn’t responsible for separating us. We managed that on our own.

  ANNABELLE D’HUART She tried to drive us apart but wasn’t the cause. From the day Ricardo and I separated, she simply stopped calling. Fernando and Ricardo had brought us together, then split us apart.

  JACQUES GRANGE Annabelle was awestruck over Loulou. Loulou thought, I’ll be able to control the situation—and pouf!—Annabelle and Ricardo have a baby. C’est la vie, non?

  The one thing that has never caught up with Annabelle’s age is her voice, which, in her sixties, remains stubbornly that of a child. One day, a fact-checker from Vogue called, following up on a piece that Edmund White, Genet’s biographer, had written about her. Annabelle answered the phone. The fact-checker asked to speak to her mother.

  EDMUND WHITE I met a young man I’ll call “Brice.” Brice and I went

  to Syria with my translator Marc Cholodenko and his mistress, Annabelle d’Huart. Annabelle spoke like a ten-year-old girl, in an absurdly high baby-doll voice. She was a designer of household objects and hated it when magazines linked her name to Bofill, as if her creations couldn’t stand on their own (I’d made that mistake in an article I’d written just to please her). She’d studied art in Florence, photography in New York, and design in Barcelona with Bofill. She worked as a photographer, a jewelry and office furniture designer, and a model—and even at an advanced age she was on the runway for Yohji Yamamoto, the same year another model was sent home for gaining five pounds. She eventually wrote two books, one on harems and one on Bofill’s atelier—yes, despite her irritation at being identified by him.

  On our way out of the Umayyed Mosque in Damascus a handsome sheik grabbed Brice’s hand and made to abduct him. To Brice’s regret, I tugged on his other hand, trying to keep my pretty boyfriend. The sheik was soon laughing at the situation and melted into the crowd instantly. Annabelle, considered a great beauty in Paris, was miffed to be passed over in favor of Brice. The fact was she was too skinny, what the French call “too dry” (séche), to appeal to Levantine tastes.

  107 Designer of film posters.

  108 Graphic designer and photographer who created enduring images of Grace Jones.

  109 Luigi d’Urso (1951–2006) was perhaps Loulou’s chief partner in the pursuit of a good time. Gwendoline, who went on to marry Peter Bemberg, is from fashion stock: Her mother is Dreda Mele, erstwhile working socialite employed by Givenchy and Armani.

  18

  Bijoux de Fantaisie

  ALYNE DE BROGLIE Loulou and I did a lot, a lot of jewelry together, thousands of pieces over the years, working with artisans who specialized in a certain technique or material—Scemama for wood, Goossens for rock crystal and gilt bronze, Gripoix for verre nacré, a mixture of mother-of-pearl and poured glass that when it sets looks like pearl. Loulou wasn’t interested in what things cost; she left that to me. Before she joined the studio, no one had been in charge of jewelry—everyone did everything—and there wasn’t as much. Saint Laurent gave up little authority, and he didn’t have confidence in many people, but Loulou had enough personality that he trusted her.

  KENDRA DANIEL Before Saint Laurent, the dominant look in fashion jewelry was ladylike: rhinestones and fake pearls. He and Loulou introduced and combined new materials—leather, cork, ceramic, velvet, plastic. You can read his history through his jewelry. He loved the sea: coral, nautilus shells, sea horses. Loulou wore it better than anyone. Skinny’s wonderful for draping. She was tiny but wore huge pieces. A question of attitude. I feel ridiculous in small jewelry.

  ROBERT GOOSSENS She was a dynamic young femme du monde with a sacré caractè re who, when she started, knew nothing. Slowly she grew in importance, becoming M. Saint Laurent’s ché rie, his instrument. She did what he didn’t want to do; what he was above. Loulou was never a costume jeweler by métier. She could draw, but she had her designs made by artisans like me with deep knowledge of the craft. I can do everything: sculpt, engrave, carve, polish, cast, lime. If Loulou walked in here now and saw that chandelier, she’d say, “Make me a choker like that.”

  We saw each other practically every day for thirty years. Not just at the house, we’d go to the Louvre to look at Renaissance jewelry together. I’d been accustomed to working with Mlle. Chanel and M. Balenciaga, I’d always dealt with them directly. M. Saint Laurent relied on Loulou to transmit his ideas. She was my intermediary. I did a lot of unpolished crystal for Mlle. Chanel, and then for M. Saint Laurent, but my first piece was for M. Balenciaga. I first worked with Mademoiselle on her comeback collection of 1954. “I only wear bijoux de fantaisie,” she told me, “but so beautifully made it leaves fine jewelry in the dust.” The jewels I did for her were dubbed “Byzantine barbarian.” Mademoiselle’s friend Hélène Lazareff, the founder of Elle, had given her a Byzantine cross. “Do something like that,” Coco said, so I did a whole series of primitive crosses in different sizes, materials, finishes—gilded, silvered, with pearls, turquoises. In my view, Loulou wanted to replace Mademoiselle Chanel, copy her. Not her style, but her personality.

  STELLA BLUM and DIANA VREELAND Only when Chanel had totally pared down her clothes did she proceed to cover them—with emeralds, rubies, sapphires, chains and pearls. More often than not, the rubies were glass cabochons, the ropes of pearls were fake. Chanel popularized artificial jewelry and taught women to use jewels to convey luxury and dash.

  SUZY MENKES Chanel made dramatic costume jewelry rooted in Russian precious jewelry, whereas the roots of what Loulou did were in the hippie trail. Of course, I realize that women in Pakistan or Africa had worn these things before, but it was the first time for smart, elegant
women, or whatever we call them.

  LOULOU Accessories barely existed [when I started]. Yves used to design the jewelry himself… Little by little, I took it over. I invent things to please him, expanding on a theme… But in recent years the accessories have become a veritable business, with their own boutique on the faubourg Saint-Honoré110… The jewelry’s main interest is its creativity, not its commercial value. Chanel was the first between the wars to combine the real with the fake. She believed a woman shouldn’t look like a bank vault. Still, you have to realize that even ten years ago no serious client would wear couture jewelry. It wasn’t done. After every show it was sold in clearance sales… I like the French term “bijoux de fantaisie” better than the English “costume jewelry,” which sounds so heavy, like Sarah Bernhardt hitting the stage. Once, the customs man opened my valise and saw all these brightly colored things and said, “Do you work in a circus?”

  STASH KLOSSOWSKI DE ROLA There was an incident where Loulou and Thadée were held at gunpoint in their apartment by thieves who threatened to kill them. Loulou under fire was apparently incredibly cool and stoic. Having gone through all the costume jewelry, the robbers kept asking, “Where are the real jewels? If you don’t come up with the real stuff, it’s not going to make a very pretty picture when your brains are splattered all over the wall.” Loulou replied, “I’m not going to see the pretty picture if my brains are scattered all over the wall, am I?” In the end, they only made off with my brother’s rings. “Well,” Loulou had said to them, “fake jewelry is what I make. What did you expect?”

  Much of Loulou’s job was collaborative, but she also designed independently, producing detailed drawings that told artisans everything they needed to know to build her creations, down to the last faceted crystal. The list of colors (above, top left) refers to the four bands of joining elements seen again in the finished necklace (right). Loulou designed it for Yves’s penultimate collection, shown in 2001. © Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. Courtesy of the holders.

  In the 1980s, Robert Goossens created a number of slightly different versions of this necklace, a jumble of resin crystals resembling boiled sweets. It was not unheard of for jewelry to be recycled, turning up in more than one season. Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. © Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. Courtesy of the holders.

  Michèle Baschet necklace of plastic, glass beads and painted ceramic in the form of poppies, 1983. Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. © Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. Courtesy of the holders.

  Robert Goossens bib necklace of loose gilt-bronze chain mail, hung with seashells and glass beads, late 1990s. The labeling of Saint Laurent jewelry is often frustratingly imprecise: Although tagged “RG” (for “Rive Gauche”), this necklace was not produced for the ready-to-wear market. Some pieces marked “RG” were in fact made in small numbers or were one of a kind. Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. © Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. Courtesy of the holders.

  LOULOU Style is taste, where one lives, who one lives with, what makes one cry, what makes one laugh … We tango between seasons when you wonder whether anyone needs more than a black skirt and a sweater and some jewelry and the times when you want everything to be like a devastating feast—wild, gay, spirited … I think Saint Laurent was the first house to spend as much money on the production of [accessories] as on [clothes] … The door to the house was always open. I received everyone to give people a chance. We had boys who knit metal thread into fish and shells … who would make jewels out of painted cardboard. Someone would come and show me a bracelet and we would do an entire collection around it. There were no limits … It was a very generous enterprise. We kept a lot of people alive. It must have cost a fortune, but you did not think about it in those days. Today when a collection is made, it is made by one manufacturer. Before, we had seven or eight people working on one collection. The companies we worked with were so small, they might close down if you didn’t use them … Yves always twisted [the styling] … a wood jewel would go on an evening gown and rhinestones on a tweed suit. It was never about a diamond [on] a black dress … I have a horror of things you can’t lose. I don’t like small real stones. I’m not crazy about pastels.

  PATRICK MAURIÈS In his voluminous History of Luxury, published in 1880, Henri Baudrillart dates the origin of “fake jewelry” to the reign of Louis XIV. The king covered himself, his mistresses and favorites with precious stones, and while his courtesans were eager to emulate him, they lacked the means, resorting to simulated diamonds … More prosaically, most fashion historians agree that bijouterie fantaisie, or “costume jewelry,” was born in 1873, the year the industry’s regulating body was founded …

  By the time Robert Goossens started making jewelry … [bijouterie fantaisie] was associated with the creation of genuine new forms using new materials and the formulation of its own particular aesthetic … It was no longer a question of masking or simulating but on emphasizing … the true nature of the false, of deliberately and playfully advertising ambiguity.

  JEAN-LUC FRANÇOIS Loulou complained she couldn’t draw, and she couldn’t, not well, but it didn’t matter. She had a greater skill: She could make things. Her desk was always covered with beads, bits of wood and glass, findings, string, paper, wire, and before your eyes she’d create something amazing. She pushed me and my wife, Martine Boutron, and the other artisans to do things we never would have thought of on our own. “We’re going to do a headpiece that wraps around the neck and climbs up the ear and finishes on top of the head”—and we did it!

  ROBERT GOOSSENS I was born at home on rue de Montmorency in the Marais in 1927, a neighborhood of engravers, chasers, gilders, casters, jewelers, founders, enamelers, polishers, setters. At fifteen, I was apprenticed to Bauer, a goldsmith’s where for one year I made a single part, a cap for Cartier lighters. The boredom … At other ateliers I learned to make fountain pens and clasps for handbags, and to master glass, wood, leather, ivory, tortoiseshell, enamel … My father and grandfather were metal casters, and I worked with them at the Aubert foundry for Hermès, Puiforcat, Christofle … Picasso and Giacometti used Aubert, so I’d see them when they came through.

  I started in the haute couture in 1948, doing piecework in my tiny apartment for Max Boinet. Boinet produced jewelry and objets—necklaces of dyed seeds, boxes covered in woven straw—for Balenciaga, Fath, Rochas, Dessès, Castillo, Schiaparelli and Dior. Everyone pitched in, my wife setting stones, my mother doing the gold-leafing, my father and grandfather casting. Dior is where I first met M. Saint Laurent. The Marquise de Beausset took me under her wing and climbed the five flights of stairs to my flat with Sonia Delaunay.111 A style of my own emerged. I take a glass, put in some Egyptian, a little Persian, some Etruscan, shake it, and out comes a piece of Goossens jewelry.

  In 1954, I hadn’t a clue who Mlle. Chanel was, but she knew who I was, through friends like Louise de Vilmorin. Mlle. Chanel had suffered, abandoned by her father, orphaned by her mother … She made herself into Coco Chanel like Onassis made himself into Onassis. She gave me some pearls and diamonds and said, “Do what you can.” When I saw her next, she put on the brooch I’d made her but talked about shooting in Ireland, cooking in Switzerland—everything except the brooch. Finally, I said, “Mademoiselle, are you pleased?” She snapped that if she hadn’t liked it she wouldn’t have put it on. I learned never to ask a question. I would bring her things, elements, without knowing where she’d place them on the mannequin or what she’d ask me to make them into. Other times, I’d present a necklace and she’d decide she wanted it as a belt. I was her magician, she said.

  She couldn’t draw, couldn’t even read a drawing. She didn’t give me any direction, beyond forbidding pendant earrings: “I don’t want to look like La Vache Qui Rit.” I also made things for her privately. One day we were in her apartment and she asked me to climb a ladder and unhook a thirty-kilo rock-crystal ball from a chandelier and make her an objet. I was doing something for the shah of Iran, and lions are
a motif in Persian art. So three bronze lions became the base for Coco’s ball, carrying it on their backs.

  We were close enough that we dined together, but she never said, “M. Goossens, you’re a wonderful artist.” She said it about me to others, but not to me. I remember running into her coming out of the Ritz. I was on my bicycle. “Are you mad!” she cried. “What if someone hits you? What would we do without you?” It was the closest she came to a compliment.

  She had a lot of respect for M. Saint Laurent. They once had lunch together, or so she said. Years later I asked him about it. “Never,” he said. “I’d be too afraid she’d eat me!” Somebody wasn’t telling the truth, so I asked M. Bergé. “Yves and I were having lunch at the Ritz with Lauren Bacall. ‘Don’t turn around,’ I whispered, ‘Chanel is right behind us.’ ” So she was able to say she’d had lunch with M. Saint Laurent, just not at the same table. “He’ll replace me when I’m gone,” she told me. Which is what happened.

  One Christmas Eve near the end, I got a call from François, her maî tre d’hô tel. “Mademoiselle wants to see you right away.” I raced to the Ritz. Her hand was paralyzed. Her wrist no longer supported it, it flopped down—“I won’t allow people to see me this way!” But what could I do? Did she think I was a healer? A druid? I made her a bronze brace for the underside of her wrist, held in place with a Velcro strap covered in stones.