Loulou & Yves

  When she died, in 1971, it was like I lost my grandmother. She had a reputation for being brutal, though never with me. She made me what I am. I owe her everything. Pierre Bergé and M. Saint Laurent had called me before to work for them, but I’d always said no, out of loyalty to Mlle. Chanel. Plus, she gave me more to do than I could handle. But now I was free.

  YANOU COLLART Goossens asked Chanel’s permission to work for Saint Laurent. “Never as long as long as I’m alive,” she said. “Jaaaa-MAIS!”

  ROBERT GOOSSENS Coco had only agreed to share me with Madame Grès and M. Balenciaga. I had no telephone, so I communicated with M. Balenciaga by telegram, shuttling between my atelier and the couture houses in a van I converted into a workshop with a stove. The jewelry I made for him was strictly for his shows, because he only wanted his clothes worn with fine jewelry. I collaborated with Madame Grès on a sheath dress for the Duchess of Windsor. A garland of metal water-lily leaves started at one shoulder, wound around the torso and finished on the opposite hip. It wasn’t an easy thing to wear, but the duchess wore it well.

  The difference between M. Saint Laurent and Mlle. Chanel and M. Balenciaga: M. Saint Laurent had a studio: a design team: Loulou. He’d set the direction, African art or Picasso, and she’d give me drawings. But I didn’t use them. I did my own research.

  PATRICK GOOSSENS I began working with my father in 1973. I was nineteen. It’s not that we never saw M. Saint Laurent, but Loulou was our direct line. We were never handed forty drawings at the beginning of a collection and told, “Make these.” We were given fabric swatches, shown pictures, of ironwork on a Venetian balcony, Matisse paintings. “On adore ç a, M. Goossens.” “On est toqué.” When M. Saint became interested in cameos, buying up a huge collection, they’re what we worked from for the runway.

  Another time it was blue coral. Loulou brought out a picture taken underwater with a filter that turned the coral blue. I explained that it was in fact white. “Well, yes, but it’s blue we want.” We produced the coral in metal and had a car-paint company custom-mix the color. So who gets the credit? If Loulou hadn’t insisted … Another example: M. Saint Laurent gave us a sketch of a cross he wanted in rock crystal. A drawing from him was just a few pencil strokes, the merest suggestion. We made the cross and delivered it to Loulou. She brought it into the studio while we waited. “M. Saint Laurent would like to see you.” He was so shy, it was excruciating. He wanted to thank my father, who was practically in tears. “Thank me for what? The idea was yours. Without it …” We went through fire and water to please Loulou and M. Saint Laurent. For a Moroccan star motif, we came up with acrylic glass marquetry. Rock crystal was too expensive for Rive Gauche, so we found something that mimicked its compactness and luminosity: epoxy resin.

  We didn’t start from zero every time. There were Rive Gauche pieces made more elaborately for the couture, and couture things simplified for Rive Gauche. We produced from ten to several hundred of a ready-to-wear design. We once did a Saint Laurent lighter with Cartier in the shape of a

  flat, rounded stone, like a guest soap. Huge flop. When Monet held the license for mass-market jewelry in the States, we were the link between it and Loulou. Monet attended the shows and was shown a selection. Our job was to reconcile Loulou’s ideals and the interpretation of a design by a big-scale manufacturer.

  NADINE ALONSO M. Saint Laurent would draw the silhouette of a dress, scribble a motif on top, and say to Robert, “I’d like a belt like that, a necklace …” A week after he announced the theme of a collection, Robert would return with rough elements in metal or wax, slabs, just to give an idea. Loulou would say, “That’d be interesting for a pin, that’s good for a bracelet.” M. Saint Laurent might add, “It’s too thin.” Robert would then go away again and come back with prototypes of the actual jewelry. More discussion: “You won’t be able to see it on the runway.” Back to the atelier. The kind of collaboration Robert had with M. Saint Laurent and Loulou doesn’t exist anymore. Jewelry artisans today are subcontractors, with rarely any contact with the designers. They’re sealed off. After Mademoiselle died, Chanel treated Robert like a supplier.

  ROBERT GOOSSENS I was in Hong Kong and saw a jar of dried seahorses in a pharmacy, and thought there was something I could do with them. When I got home, I lacquered them, gave them pearls for eyes and attached them to pieces of coral as earrings. Loulou wanted to put them with everything, so I went back to Hong Kong and bought the whole jar. “Mister,” the shopkeeper said, “I have something much stronger, let me show you.” For the Chinese, seahorses are an aphrodisiac.

  I was like a slice of ham between Loulou on one side and the licensees on the other. Cartier and Monet would have been happy selling salami with Saint Laurent’s name on it. At the height of Rive Gauche, I had fifty-five employees. I sold my company to Chanel in 2005. I’m in business now as Les Paruriers, still doing jewelry.

  PATRICK GOOSSENS We still have the Saint Laurent prototypes, because when we sold the business, no one came forward to claim them. What Loulou was, when you add it up, was a great compositrice. I don’t want to destroy the myth, but there was a magazine article, “Les bijoux de Loulou de La Falaise.” For my father, it was his jewelry for Saint Laurent. He didn’t understand that this was brand building and Loulou was paid as part of the system. He thought fashion people like her are eunuchs, because they can’t make what they design. He was capable of little remarks about Loulou, and not shy about who he made them to. If you gave her a handful of beads, she could make something wonderful, but it didn’t require any skill.

  KENNETH JAY LANE Beads are funny, because any lady with artistic sense can make something nice. You don’t even need pliers.

  ALYNE DE BROGLIE To enfiler in French is “to thread”—for example, beads. People who say Loulou was an enfileuse are malicious. She was much more.

  CAROLINE LOEB You do know that enfileuse has another meaning. It’s slang for a woman who fucks around, stringing men like pearls. Without taking anything away from her, Loulou just went from intuition to intuition in her work. “I like the pink better.” “Five bracelets instead of four.” “Let’s add green.”

  KENDRA DANIEL My collection of Saint Laurent jewelry is the largest in private hands. It rivals what Pierre has, which he’s not too happy about. I have around three thousand items in my database, mostly jewelry but also belts, hair combs, sunglasses, couture, ready-to-wear, tiaras, buckles, hats, shoes, shawls, gloves, evening bags, a jeweled bra, drawings… That number includes parures, so in terms of actual pieces I have many more. They date from Saint Laurent’s Dior days, through to his last show and beyond. As the collection grew, I had a fifteen-foot-long lacquer cabinet, twenty-seven-inches high, with seven bays, six for the jewelry, made for my town house in Park Ridge, New Jersey. It was lacquered, enameled in a body shop. The insides of the doors have the four squares of the Rive Gauche logo in the original colors, orange and magenta. Every time a piece comes up for sale anywhere in the world, I know about it. I thought Pierre would be thrilled that someone cared enough to create what I have, but no. Three of his people have been out to see the collection, including Connie Uzzo, who ran the Saint Laurent office in New York, but nothing has come of it. Pierre is angry with himself for letting so much of the jewelry go. The house didn’t start holding on to it until late.

  The high-end boutique pieces are marked “Rive Gauche Yves Saint Laurent”; the couture pieces aren’t signed. I’ve paid north of ten thousand dollars for a single necklace. Copies muck up the market. Kenny Lane has a history of copying Saint Laurent. He offends me. Marina Schiano funneled her Saint Laurent jewelry to Mark Walsh, a dealer, and he funneled them to me. I avoid maintenance. A little age is interesting. The jewelry wears its history; I don’t want to alter it and wash off the associations. The man who sold me the Catherine Deneuve pieces got them directly from Catherine Deneuve. She just didn’t want them anymore. She’s a tough businessperson but was pleased they were going into a collection. This b
racelet belonged to Tina Chow, 112 those earrings to Diana Vreeland… This is my “mama” drawer—Mme. Saint Laurent. Everything still smells of her perfume. She sold all her jewelry after Saint Laurent retired. Bergé was furious, but Yves had become a zombie and she said she needed the money.

  Most of Kendra Daniel’s Saint Laurent jewelry collection is housed in a custom cabinet she had enameled in a body shop; this bay is one of six. The four squares of the Rive Gauche logo are in the original colors. Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. © Christopher Petkanas.

  Loulou continued working with Gripoix—the Paris firm unrivaled for the luscious sheen of its pâte de verre, or poured glass—after Saint Laurent retired and she started her own company. Founded in the 1890s, Gripoix made jewelry for Poiret, Worth, Molyneux… Kendra & Allan Daniel Collection. © Christopher Petkanas.

  Le grand geste: Pink and eau de nil was the kind of typically go-for-broke Saint Laurent color combination that caused American retailers to go into paroxysms of ecstasy and their cash registers to go ka-ching! Loulou was photographed at home in an evening suit from the spring-summer 1981 couture collection the following year. © Guy Marineau.

  I hope to do a book and an exhibit. It’s complicated. If I do the book without a show, I need Pierre’s permission, because the jewelry is intellectual property. If the book is tied to an exhibit, the problem disappears, so we’ll see. If the collection isn’t ultimately acquired by a museum, it’ll be sold at my death and the money given to animal-rescue charities.

  Pierre’s troops never know when they are going to be called to battle, so they are always poised for it, just in case. A couple of years ago, Connie Uzzo tried to throw Kendra off the scent by putting out word that pieces of jewlery coming up at auction, offered as being from the 1968 “African” collection, were fakes. But Kendra always knows what she is buying: She got three ’68 Scemama necklaces in the sale—real ones. She wasn’t the only one who wanted them. Throughout the sale she was bid up by someone the auction house said represented the Fondation Saint Laurent.

  110 Couture accessories that had been sold only at avenue Marceau got their own Jacques Granges–designed boutique in 1990.

  111 Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979), widely influential designer of fabrics, ceramics, playing cards …

  112 Bettina (“Tina”) Chow (1950–1992), fashion idol in the same pantheon as Loulou.

  19

  Les Clans

  ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST The Yves posse … was pretty, witty and buzzy, a fiercely protected coven devoted to the diffident designer with the letterbox smile. At their helm was Clara Saint.

  BOB COLACELLO Andy and I were in Paris [in 1974], on our way to lunch in his honor at the Baron Alexis de Redé ’s Palais Lambert on the Î le Saint-Louis … A footman stood behind every other chair in case a napkin dropped … It wasn’t only the Proustian richesse that was overwhelming, but also the Proustian intrigue and backbiting. Nobody ever seemed to say anything nice about anybody else, not even their greatest friends. We saw the Saint Laurent–Rothschild group exclusively that week, because if we had seen any other they would have stopped seeing us … I liked the Saint Laurent group, but I wasn’t sure if they liked me. It was hard to tell who they liked, except each other, and even then I wasn’t sure. Yves hardly talked, except in whispers and in French. Pierre never stopped talking, in barks and in French … Loulou was nice one minute, not the next. Clara was always nice, always laughing, but did she also laugh behind your back? And Thadé e was like Yves, the weak, silent type …

  ANDRÉLEON TALLEY The meanest, nastiest person in that crowd was Clara Saint. I hate to call a woman a bitch, so instead say “cruel” and “evil.” She invented the name “Queen Kong” for me, which I consider racist. She’s bitter because she lost Thadée and spent her fortune living at the Plaza Athénée with him. Another great word for Clara Saint: vile.

  JEAN-PIERRE DE LUCOVICH Of course, you can hardly blame Yves for being scarce. What dinner, however lavish could compare to a cozy evening with close friends, dancing to the melody of an old Trenet record, listening to La Callas, or imitating the latest look of that poor old … (hush, no names!)?

  It would be folly on my part to list the Chosen Ones only. The number of anointed “intimes” does not exceed ten or twelve people and I have no intention of exposing myself to the unleashed fury of the “others”, i.e. those who imagine they belong to the inner circle yet have to be content with a merely orbital position. I much prefer—be it hypocritical—to name Yves’s friends in alphabetical order:

  É mile and Charlotte Aillaud, Franç ois-Marie Banier, Pierre Bergé, Franç ois and Betty Catroux, Philippe and Marie Collin,113 Jacques Grange, Zizi Jeanmaire, Thadé e and Loulou Klossowski … Franç ois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne,114 Claude Lebon, Alexander and Tatiana Liberman, José and Anne-Marie Muñ oz, Rudolf Nureyev, Roland Petit, Hé lè ne Rochas, Marie-Hé lè ne de Rothschild, Clara Saint, Fernando Sanchez, Marina Schiano, Patrick Thé venon, Andy Warhol, Francine Weisweiller115 … Now why don’t you pick up a pencil and pick out the ten …

  If we are no longer living in the era of Versailles, it is nevertheless exhilarating to be in the very select little group where admission is the common denominator … The court goes on holiday to Marrakech where the couturier has a lovely house, and where the usual crowd is strengthened by the presence of Boul de Breteuil,116 a French lady and long-lasting friend, and of Bill Willis, an American decorator. As for weekends, it’s the Châ teau Gabriel, the couturier’s country place in Normandy …

  When at last you understand the personality of this creator … it is easier to understand why his friends take such pains to keep his friendship and continue to thrive in his shadow. What worse fate can there be for them than to be excluded from the magic circle? It would then be too late to recall Stendhal’s words when he spoke of Louis XIV: “The greatest of his achievements was to have made banishment mortally boring.”

  LOULOU There were the “adults,” Pierre and Clara, and the “children,” like Yves and me … He doesn’t know how to take a plane by himself … He hates being taken for someone normal … He’s a person who can’t live in today’s world because it is too flat, too commonplace … When we were late to the table we caught hell.

  FRANÇOISE PICOLI Loulou never carried any cash. If I went out to buy us cigarettes, she’d say, “Bon, how much do I owe you, five francs? Go ask Thadée.” He had an office in the Rive Gauche headquarters, but I wasn’t going to walk over there and ring the bell and ask for five francs. Pierre paid the running accounts Loulou had in restaurants in the neighborhood. We were at the Palace one night, she forgot her bag on the dance floor, and I brought it to her the next day at work. “Oh, pffff,” she said. “Thanks. But you know, there’s only a lipstick.”

  CHRISTOPHER MASON You always knew when that fiercely charming, slightly terrifying Saint Laurent group swept into New York. There were those who went in and out of favor, and those whose place was assured forever, like the Catroux. Loulou was the Great Eminence.

  ANDRÉLEON TALLEY Loulou was the Pied Piper, the lighthouse, the catalyst creating a salon around the Yves Saint Laurent mythology. People are still trying to control the legend of this extraordinary entourage enclosed in its ivory castle and not wanting to talk even now, in death.

  PETER DUNHAM In the very heady period from the late seventies to the mid-eighties, Loulou and Thadée were the epicenter of a certain world, the most stylish, most refined, the chicest things walking the planet. Everything about them, the music and artists they were into … Cole Porter would have sung about Loulou. While not the richest of the Saint Laurent bunch, they were the youngest and coolest, more yé-yé, with the hippest friends. Naughtier friends. Paris, New York, London—their wings were spread. In what was a pretty constipated world, they were the fun, inventive ones, true bohemians, mixing high and low, “Magic Bus” meets Gloucestershire, a lot of it synthesized from Maxime. Loulou gave sexy, freewheeling parties during the collections, and for a youn
g man like me, it was potent stuff, because you’d see Mick Jagger and fabulous old chicks like Lynn Wyatt and Jacqueline de Ribes.117 It was exactly what you imagine life is about.

  DIDER GRUMBACH Loulou was center stage, which is not necessarily relaxing. It’s funny to give an image of beauty and delight, when actually you’re in a constant state of distress. Pierre Bergé nourished the idea of the Saint Laurent family—which included the president of the Republic. It seemed the picture of happiness, but when you look closely … The animosities that arose brusquely within the clan left their mark, requiring a talent for storing away old wounds.

  Loulou at the height of her powers, photographed by Jean-Pierre Masclet, Paris, about 1982. Masclet: “There were hair and makeup people in the studio that day, but she didn’t want anything. I shot her just as she was.” © Jean-Pierre Masclet.

  GRACE CODDINGTON You were privileged to be caught in the Saint Laurent web. When Calvin Klein hired Marina Schiano, the hope was that some of the genius would rub off.

  ASHTON HAWKINS I wish I’d known Loulou better. But she escaped into that Saint Laurent coterie, where you couldn’t really follow, nor would you be invited.

  MICHEL KLEIN Everyone who mattered came through Loulou’s apartment on rue des Plantes. She made the most bourgeois people seem like gypsies—even Hélène Rochas. There were different bands—David Hockney’s, Andy Warhol’s… Loulou was the princess of them all: high society, bankers, rockers, artists, street people …

  BRUCE CHATWIN “Haute Culture,” The World of Interiors, September 1983 Louise and Thadé e Klossowski live in the XIVè me arrondissement of Paris in a studio overlooking a roofscape of slate mansards … The building dates from 1929; one of the original tenants was Max Ernst; the style is “ocean-liner”; and the bedroom stands in relation to the rest of the studio as the sun to the promenade deck … [a] “house in the sky.” After all, if you do have to spend all day in a maison de couture, the logical step is to establish your domestic life on an even more rarefied plane.