Loulou & Yves

  The principal walls were painted the mauve of Monet dawns … the bathroom and dressing-room were stippled to resemble lapis lazuli; and the enormous studio windows were hung with lengths of plain white calico which can be tied, knotted or draped to resemble different kinds of clouds. A collection of batiks … flap from the railings like flags at a regatta … When the Klossowskis first moved in, you thought, depending on whether you rang their bell in the morning or evening, that you had arrived too early or too late for a ball at the Tui-

  leries. The only chairs were the spindly gilded, red-damask-covered chairs, originally designed for the galas of the Second Empire, and later appropriated by couture houses for fashion-buyers to perch on. There was, of course, a palm. There was a round table covered in a red shawl; and above it, bristling with candles, hung a splendid crystal chandelier constructed on a scale fit for a rajah … From time to time, at dinner, you did see a guest look up and roll his eyes.

  For want of a colonnade, the Klossowskis had to make do with a single white plaster Ionic column, from the top of which may spurt a few dozen amaryllis, if an admirer has been to the florist, or half a flowering tree if Loulou has been on one of her foraging expeditions in the Fô ret de Fontainebleau … Then the mirrors came: A Venetian mirror; a Gaudí mirror from a friend in Barcelona; a towering mirror from the châ teau of one of Louis XIV’s bankers—and then came the day-bed … a “Great Neck Louis Quinze” model shipped by Loulou’s mother from New York. About a half-dozen people can clamber aboard …

  Other sources of wonder … a gilded “Scythian” crown, supposed once to have been worn by the tragedian Talma, and now worn by the bronze head of Loulou’s father … The Klossowskis … have deliberately chosen furniture that is “fake.” As a professional, Loulou knows that true luxury is always ephemeral—something to be enjoyed, remembered but never to be stuck with … Stacked in her wardrobe are hundreds of bits of beautiful cloth—Oriental, Western, whatever—which can simply be strewn about; or used to cover tables, chairs and lampshades; or folded up and put away again … I have taken so long writing this article that the photographs published beside it belong, already, to the distant past.

  ANDRÉLEON TALLEY Despite the eighteenth-century chandelier Pierre and Yves gave her for her wedding, Loulou still lived like a bohemian, draping vegetable crates with quilted Marseille bedspreads and using them for end tables. Her ideal luxury was languishing in a tub with Thadée or threading a group of friends into a garland of personalities for supper parties that lasted till dawn.

  LOULOU A blue carpet in order to stand above the sky. Plants and objects like a jungle. Crystal for the feeling of air and fluidity … I’m fairly consistent in my tastes. I like bright, multihued fabrics and colors … painted or gilded wood … lacquered objects, or decorative paintwork … materials with a cracked surface … cotton, velvet, and all handmade fabrics: kilims, blankets from the Atlas Mountains… I like surprises, things that clash, are unexpected, break unity, disrupt monotony—modern paintings with Louis XV furniture …

  INÈS DE LA FRESSANGE Someone else might have gone the Jansen-circa-1930 route decorating Loulou’s apartment, but her way was more bohè me chic: potiches tall as a man, massive plants in unglazed terra-cotta pots, everything overscaled. Baroque but not ostentatious. Lots of bric-a-brac. Nothing to do with money and everything to do with taste and imagination. Loulou had two lofts side by side, one rented by my husband, Luigi d’Urso, before I knew him.

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  RICARDO BOFILL It was the era of cliques and clique wars—Saint Laurent versus Lagerfeld. For Pierre and Yves, Karl was a talentless, vulgar parvenu who on top of it all was German. The antagonism was awful, like the Mafia in Chicago, transposed to the fashion world.

  ANNABELLE D’HUART The clan operated like a court, everyone so spoiled, never having to make an effort. You wanted drugs, drugs were brought to you. There was fear, like in the Mob, that either you were in or out. If you were in, there were many daily luxuries. Flowers and theater tickets rained from the skies. There was a yearning for the superlative that erased all reality and feeling. Pierre Bergé was the big boss. We called him “Captain Haddock,” after the Tintin character, because he ensured that everything functioned, and functioned on time. Forward ho! Pierre gave the clan structure. Without it, Loulou could never have enjoyed such a butterfly’s existence.

  Everyone wanted to work with Saint Laurent. Loulou was the key to access. People came to avenue Marceau from the four corners of the earth, like the Three Kings with their offerings, hoping to tempt him. Through Loulou, you were invited to parties and able to borrow dresses—a million things. Every night, my head spinning, I was out in a different couture dress. Loulou was shielded by Saint Laurent. She moved in a powerful world, and she understood power. She couldn’t have a child, that’s what she’d always been told. But then in 1985 Anna arrived. Yves is Anna’s godfather, Beatrice de Rothschild her godmother. Loulou knew how to position her pawns.

  COLOMBE PRINGLE Was she a snob? Well, I don’t know how she treated her maid. She had her group, why should she look outside it? You could eat, dress, smoke, drink, sniff—what more do you need? They had their own vocabulary and codes. They laughed at the same things and always met at the same hour at the same place, like Warhol and his entourage. So no, I wouldn’t say she was a snob, though the way she spoke could start a revolution.

  LOUIS BENECH Loulou had a singular voice, cosmopolitan, posh, high-society, but not affected. She had two registers: castafiore or giggling. So either you got the duchess or the little girl.

  VIOLETA SANCHEZ A snob is sine nobilitas, someone who behaves like Loulou but doesn’t have the background. She had tons of nobilitas. Her upbringing was, Never complain, never explain. To show your emotions was embarrassing, not so much for you as others. You know, “Spare them my feelings.” She got married, she got bored and left with a suitcase in the middle of the night when she was twenty-one. That was Loulou.

  She wasn’t a starfucker. Without being unpleasant, she had those manners that can instantly cut someone off. A frightening authority. Cryptic. Inaccessible. Scary but fascinating. It was difficult to read her. She decided to communicate with you. She was completely Fitzgeraldian, Thadée, too. Always big gestures, but you couldn’t get half of what she was saying.

  CAROLINE LOEB Of course she was a snob. Honey, what ultrasnob doesn’t worship her concierge, okay? The ultimate chic is to be best friends with your butcher. You can only be as brutal as Loulou was to me if someone loves you as much as I loved her. She was like Oriane de Guermantes in Proust: the elegance, the taste, the wit—and the cruelty. When I ran into her, I felt she despised me, that she didn’t give a shit. Worse than that, actually. I introduced her to my daughter Louise, and I could feel her thinking, So you even named your daughter after me, you stupid fan.

  CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN People think of Loulou as aloof, hieratic; in fact, she was the opposite of a princess, easygoing, low-maintenance, happy anywhere, with anyone, which is rare, because there are people who need a certain level of comfort, quality and society, to know in advance how they’re going to be received. That had no importance to her.

  INÈS DE LE FRESSANGE I have a girlfriend in Provence, Mireille, a horsewoman. The chairs chez elle are plastic, you drink wine out of a mustard glass, and I adore her. Loulou never had a friend like that. I never saw her with someone who wasn’t at least a little sophisticated. It’s that generation, the leftovers from another era: “Who is that man? What do you know about him?” This was familiar to me from my grandmother. “You—who are your parents?” It happens that Luigi was chiquissime, from a grand Italian family, but I was never preoccupied with any of that.

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  RICARDO BOFILL Yves and Bergé always found a boy to stick in the middle and have fun with—Joël Le Bon, Madison Cox …

  CHRISTOPHER MASON I met Madison in the Mike Todd VIP room at the Palladium in New York, the center of the
universe in the mid-eighties. Here was this handsome guy who looked uncannily like the young Saint Laurent: tall, thin, same glasses and touching effeteness. Clearly, it was a look Pierre coveted.

  ANNABELLE D’HUART The difference between Joël and Madison—Madison had backbone. Joël was Loulou’s chevalier servant, organizing her parties, climbing the ladder to light the chandelier candles. Sex wasn’t a barrier between them. Pas de problè me. Changing partners was like changing shirts. I think Caroline was sent to Ricardo at one point. I know things, but they’re for him to say, if he wants, not me.

  MARIE BELTRAMI Thadée slept with every girl he met—Annabelle, too, Loulou told me.

  ANNABELLE D’HUART You had to be strong not to be carried away by the clan, to say, “No, thank you, I prefer not.” Joël succumbed. They found him a job. He wanted to write a book, so he wrote a book, with Thadée, on the theatrical team Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault. But it was just a pretext. Bergé financed it: his way of keeping Joël and Thadée under his thumb. I was afraid for Joël. Knowing how the clan manipulated people, I had reason to be.

  JEAN-LUC FRANÇOIS For the house’s image, it was important to Pierre that everyone in the family be on the payroll. Earning a check gave Thadée added value. Working in the same building as Clara, they were guaranteed to run into each other! It took Thadée and Joël years to write that book.

  MATTIA BONETTI Whatever little work was done, Joël did. This was the one time Thadée had a bit of a job, and he didn’t do it. He didn’t give a fuck.

  Joël worked for Interview, was bright, social, homosexual but not. Like Loulou. She wasn’t restrictive. There was light, jokey talk about sodomy. Anal sex didn’t phase her. She liked it, I think.

  CARLOS MUñOZ There was so much sexual ambiguity in the clan, and as a teenager that upset me. Loulou was the most ambiguous of all. We had a difficult rapport. I was catastrophically shy. She was as awkward with me as I was with her, and for the same reason: She was fundamentally ill at ease. My adolescence wasn’t stable. Because of my parents’ entourage, my feelings about homosexuality were confused. I knew I was heterosexual, but except for my father my role models were homosexual: my great-uncle Henri Sauguet, Karl, Yves and Frédéric Mitterrand, my first boss. When Yves packs his suitcase and leaves Pierre, where does he go? To Karl’s, looking for Jacques de Bascher. Pierre walks out on Yves, it’s over for them as a couple, in 1976. When the phone rings at our house at 5:00 a.m., who is it? Yves. “Coco, pass me your papa,” and my father goes to scrape him off the sidewalk. This was my childhood. I felt Yves took my place in my mother’s life, because she was always leaving to be with him.

  Loulou earned four stars from Women’s Wear Daily at the 1983 Met ball celebrating Diana Vreeland’s Saint Laurent retrospective. Loulou isn’t usually identified with Yves’s tenues de grande soirée, but she carried them off, and then some. WWD Archive copyright © Fairchild Publishing, LLC.

  Loulou’s changeability tormented me—the seductress playing on two body types, jeune fille and jeune garç on. Throughout my childhood, I never knew who was sleeping with whom. The lack of clarity was oppressive, and I counted for nothing. Imagine one of my parents’ friends, Roland Petit, pinching my ass. I knew about the famous firehouse orgy with the firemen and Jacques. Jacques wanted to make a film about Gilles de Rais. “No, Clara isn’t coming to dinner tonight,” my mother would tell me. “Thadée will be here, so she can’t.” Now why would you tell a fifteen-year-old boy that? Why would he care? At Loulou’s, everything was so raffiné, I didn’t know where to put myself. Transferring all my anxiety to the chandelier, all I could think of was, Is it going to fall? As an adult I realized that in Loulou, Thadée had found someone as wounded as he was. He survived but never lived.

  ANNABELLE D’HUART After the trip to Sicily, Madison ascended quickly in the clan. Joël no longer measured up and was dropped. The clan was like a cruel, too-hot sun, a tank that rolled over you, then moved on, laughing loudly and shrugging, “Who cares?” Life in the family was like a game of chess. Under their civilized exteriors, these people were violent. You can say that, violent? Yes, violent.

  Everything melted like snow in the sun for Joël because of nights that ended too late and drugs and alcohol that were like a whirlwind of witches, a consuming fire. He became sick with AIDS. Pierre had someone take care of him, but after a while Joël slipped another few rungs, until he was relegated to a secretary, and then the secretary’s secretary. What happened later with Pierre’s chauffeur was part of the same culture of drugs and wild sex. The chauffeur had been with Pierre, then Yves, who gave him hundreds of his erotic drawings—which Pierre now wants back.

  Saint Laurent and Bergé built something so big, it was like an earthquake in their lives, so destabilizing that there was some rebalancing to do later, dec-adent mœurs to let go of. But they were solid. Pierre was always there, impeccable vis-à-vis Yves. Maybe the essential was missing, but the form was flawless, like they wanted to make their lives a work of art. They had the means. And the amour propre. The last thing Saint Laurent was, was modest. “I’m more famous than the pope,” he told me. He and Pierre had a very elevated vision of their persons. They did outdo everyone. The turning point was the retrospective at the Met in 1983, making Saint Laurent Warhol’s equal. Then Jack Lang118 proclaimed fashion an art. Soon the entire universe even knew the name “Moujik”—Saint Laurent’s bulldog!

  LOUIS BENECH I’d known Loulou when I worked on the garden at Château Gabriel, and at Marie-Hélène de Rothschild’s nearby, but our friendship began when I started living with Christian Louboutin. Pierre said—not that I asked him—that I shouldn’t have anything to do with Christian, because he only associated with junkies, including Loulou. I was furious.

  Pierre and Marie-Hélène were beastly competitive, both offering their lawyers to help me set up my garden business. I thanked them and declined, thinking, You old buggers. The first time I met Yves, he was spoiling for a fight. Very timid, keeping his distance. A good technique. After he understood I was not up to naughty things with Pierre, he warmed up. Château Gabriel was Yves’s Proustian fantasy—and Jacques Grange’s one great disaster. Sub–Madeleine Castaing. Too much fringe, too many orchids, too much Napoléon III. And studied! One neo-Gothic chair pulled away from a table just so, like someone had been called to the phone. No sooner would the butler push it in than Pierre would pull it back out! The Proust theme was interpreted literally, with bedrooms decorated after characters from In Search of Lost Time, and their names engraved on brass door plaques. Loulou and Thadée were always assigned Les Verdurins. Terribly affected. Not a good vibe. Though I’m sure Pierre and Yves loved it.

  BEN BRANTLEY Were any of them really that cultivated? How closely did Saint Laurent actually read Proust? Everyone in that world threw his name at you, but I’m not sure anyone could’ve told you who’s who in In Search of Lost Time. Like, “I call this my Mme. Verdurin dress”—and she’s the tackiest person in the book! So I was always a little suspicious of that.

  JACQUES GRANGE Yves thought [Château Gabriel] would be suitable for throwing grand balls filled with beautiful people. I think he did it twice. Yves grew bored very quickly.

  MARIE BELTRAMI Whenever Loulou went to dinner at Saint Laurent’s, in Normandy or Paris, all the women were expected to play the grande dame in long evening dresses and jewels, because it was the only thing he knew. He had once known the street, but that was over.

  LOULOU If you forgot to put lipstick on, he wasn’t too pleased.

  LOUIS BENECH One day, Pierre told me he was managing a friend of his to become a landscape architect: Madison Cox. I said I didn’t see the point of my working at Gabriel when he could hire his friend. “Too complicated,” he said. “Point.” Pierre had moved to the Hôtel Lutetia after leaving Yves, then to rue Bonaparte, where I also did the garden. Again this made no sense—why not Madison?

  MATTIA BONETTI As a couple, Pierre and Yves were only together—what?— eigh
teen years? And don’t forget: Madison was first with Joël, then Yves, then finally Pierre. Tout simplement, Yves couldn’t bear Madison. It hadn’t lasted long between them. Too similar. Sexually, for starters.

  RICARDO BOFILL Madison was en couple with everyone. Compared to typical Latin guys, Madison in his suits and glasses looked like he was fresh out of Yale. He had marvelous manners, knew his place and how to navigate this tricky crowd. Pierre wanted him to be a garden designer. He was adopted.

  FRANÇOISE PICOLI There was always a moment late in Loulou’s parties when she’d say to Madison, “Go to the Drugstore and buy some Vache Qui Rit, I’m going to make pasta.” Then suddenly there’d be nothing left to drink. One time she said, “Oh, no worries, I found a bottle here,” and it was something ridiculously sublime, a 1920 Sauternes that Fabrice Emaer had given her for her wedding.

  LOUIS BENECH “Officially,” there was no animosity between Yves and Madison. Maybe Yves was in love with Madison and pissed off that Madison had dropped him for Pierre. Pierre hired me instead of Madison because even though Yves and Pierre lived separate lives, Yves came often to Pierre’s, and Pierre didn’t want any trouble.

  LOULOU Yves saw himself as Callas abandoned by Onassis. He took his revenge with the brilliance of his talent, with collections that were more and more beautiful … Yves [understood] that a kind of craziness possessed him and how to use it … He used artificial energy. Time passed very quickly. He made it genuinely impossible for himself to live, physically. Rather than grow old, he gave in to his vice. Yves has the mythology of a drunk, of the aristocracy, of pop stars, of the wronged woman. He likes playing the clochard. He destroyed himself. He always said he’d end up like an old lady sitting on her crate of wine… [For me,] the trouble was the very exhausting atmosphere of anguish, the psychological problems of someone invading your own life … I would get fed up with [Yves] and Pierre. I couldn’t stand them because they were very heavy people to live with and I’d come home exhausted emotionally and nervously, rather than because I’d been working hard.