Loulou & Yves

by Christopher Petkanas

  Les vendeuses and habilleuses were a world apart, dressed in black, eventually a white blouse, so as not to overshadow: The client must always be the most beautiful. That was the tradition, you didn’t play around with it, in black you disappeared. The dressers were the guardian angels of the collection, able to answer every question about every model, knowing by heart its assigned number, because that’s how the vendeuses called for it. “Tailleur dix-huit.” “Robe vingt-deux.” Obviously, the dressers had to know how the model worked, how the bow was tied, how to get in and out, which wasn’t always clear—the closings could be devilishly complicated.

  By 1985, I’d stopped modeling and become chef de cabine. Loulou had a say on mannequins, and we didn’t always agree. I watched the fittings, absorbing the mood of the collection so I could cherry-pick girls that would suit it, even if it meant making them over, like in a harem. Loulou often wanted to use well-known girls because it was good for press. All the supermodels did Chanel, but M. Saint Laurent thought he was the star and didn’t need them. Loulou had an iron hand. There was friction. She brought in Kate Moss. Kate Moss is small and has lousy legs. She’s not a Saint Laurent girl. She did one show.

  LOULOU Yves wasn’t especially drawn to the star mannequins. They intimidated him. He even thought they could deform his clothes.

  ALYNE DE BROGLIE The worst was Loulou’s niece, Lucie. Saint Laurent didn’t want her, but Loulou forced her on him.

  RICHARD DE LA FALAISE After being hippies all those years in Wales, Lucie, Daniel, Alexis and Louisa returned to civilization, moving to Fontainebleau and trying to earn proper incomes. Daniel and Lucie lived the jet-set life in their twenties and thirties in New York. Lucie modeled for Saint Laurent and the money started coming in. Daniel had a fling with Madonna—he’s in her Sex book—and tried to be an actor-model. Alexis was an amazing cabinetmaker but could never market his talent to make money. My point is that that entire branch of the family bet on Loulou and won. Whatever success they had was through her and her relationships. I don’t think I’m inventing anything here. Did she not save the bacon?

  WILLY LANDELS At one point, Daniel cooked at George in London, one of the clubs belonging to Mark Birley, his great-uncle, but he wasn’t a success. He didn’t get on with Mark and live up to what was expected of him. It was a very forced position, because Daniel thought he could be a member of the kitchen staff one moment and then put on a dinner jacket and come into the dining room—a double thing which doesn’t work.

  CHRISTOPHER MASON There was a perception in New York of something somehow odd about Lucie and Daniel, this exotic, impossibly beautiful gamin duo, sharing an apartment as brother and sister. A whiff of something not quite right, as if they’d just stepped out of Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles.

  JüRGEN DOERING Loulou made deals with Bergé, getting jobs for her niece and mother in lieu of payment for her own work. It had to be an arrangement like that—Bergé didn’t like anyone pushed on him. He certainly didn’t go out looking for Loulou’s family.

  JEAN-LUC FRANÇOIS Lucie was small and hardly the Saint Laurent type. Even if she complained Lucie was stupid, Loulou was a like a wolf, protecting and drumming up work for her family, who never had a penny. So every so often she needed a dose of freedom. “I’m going out to have a good time. See you in two days.”

  NICOLE DORIER Lucie started in 1990 with the Hommages collection, tributes to Callas, Deneuve, Dietrich … She wore the Françoise Sagan look. Loulou’s and Clara’s idea was to create some publicity, and you can’t say it didn’t work. The press swallowed the La Falaise dynasty angle whole.

  The Hommages show was the first and last where Lucie was more than just the bride. First of all, she didn’t have a model’s body. And those hideous teeth. Once, I brought M. Saint Laurent a girl and he whispered, “I don’t want her. She looks like the bride”—meaning Loulou’s niece! She also tried to get him to take Nadja Auerman, the German model with the too-long legs, a favorite of Newton. I took her up to the studio, a chef d’atelier gave her something to try on and she walked for M. Saint Laurent. When she turned her back to leave, he shook his head. When I told her “No, sorry, thank you,” she was in tears.

  ANNE-MARIE MUñOZ He worked mostly on live mannequins. He’d send up for them two or three at a time, and he’d choose fabrics for each one, because they all gave off something different—they might inspire him in one way, but not in another. It’s why I sometimes had to tell these magnificent, intelligent girls with every conceivable quality that they couldn’t be part of the collection. They wouldn’t believe me, but it was my job to tell them, as kindly as possible, that he couldn’t work with them.

  LOULOU I think it’s a bit like a film director who’s obsessed with a particular actress. Whether she’s sympa or not, she’s the right one to play the role … The combination of [Yves’s] relationship with the mannequin, the model conceived on her, the back rippling, but just barely, when she walked past, the girl who knows exactly how to remove the jacket she’s wearing over her dress, with just the right gesture for untying the scarf—it all added up to a kind of harmony, a celebration, the idealization of a situation … I think when you hit moments of perfection, it’s got nothing to do with fashion at all. I think it’s like when you listen to a piece of music, or stand before a painting … When you see total perfection, when that note is hit, every sensitive person will be moved to tears.

  ALVA CHINN I worked a lot for Valentino, and of course Halston. Valentino never had anybody even vaguely in Loulou’s role. He was the Supreme Being, his way or no way. Everything was mapped out before you got there. I was just a live hanger, whereas Saint Laurent would ask, “What do you think? Do you like it?” He was the master, and he was asking me! He was in a state of wonder when he put the clothes on you. Do you fit his original picture of the outfit,

  or are you transforming it? I felt part of the creative process, the evolution of an idea. Halston only started asking my opinion when he had the disastrous deal with JCPenney. Normally, his front was strong, so this was a crack in his armor.

  Saint Laurent was like a lamb. I don’t know if you saw L’Amour Fou, that movie about Saint Laurent and Bergé? It made me ill. When Bergé looks into the camera at the end—it’ll rip your heart out if you knew Saint Laurent, because Bergé looks like the devil. I couldn’t stop sobbing.

  VIOLETA SANCHEZ In 1978, I was an actress starting out, in a play called Succè s. Paloma Picasso designed the costumes, and it was directed by her husband, Rafael Lopez-Sanchez, and Javier Arroyuelo. Caroline Loeb was in it, too. Tout Paris was at the opening—Helmut Newton, Loulou, Mme. Muñoz … They all noticed me. Newton was shooting for Saint Laurent, he asked me to pose for him and the rest is history. The other girls in the cabine then were Kirat, Nicole, Mounia, Amalia125 and Dothi.126 I was worried. “Are you aware I’ve never done this before?’ I asked Mme. Muñoz. “But we’ve seen you onstage and know you can move,” she said. “All you need to know is how to take off a jacket without turning the sleeves inside out.” There are tricks to removing a jacket smoothly and elegantly on the runway. During my break, I’d sneak down the street to Dior, where I knew the chef de cabine; she taught me. More than thirty years later, I was hired to teach the girls playing mannequins in Saint Laurent how to walk.

  Loulou was part of the decision that I join the cabine. It didn’t hurt that we were built exactly the same: no tits, small hips, good butt, size thirty-six. This is why Yves loved me so much: I was the “Loulou” of the show. She was entitled to a little from the couture each season, but her couture wardrobe was much larger than it would’ve been without me.

  The girls in the cabine were under contract, working full-time in the four-week run-up to the couture show. M. Bergé was archbishop, making sure we walked the line. But there was a ritual every season when at least two of us escaped to Rome to do Valentino. That meant missing a full day at Saint Laurent. We tried to sneak back in, but M. Bergé would be waiting in the cabine, k
nowing exactly what plane we were on, so he could give us a piece of his mind. But in fact, he and Yves were kind and generous. If Loulou needed us for something, we were paid to be there, extremely well compensated, never abused financially. Yves and Pierre could have been drastic and said, “This is the last time,” but they genuinely liked us. Yves would sulk for half a day, then it was over. We were treated with dignity at all the houses. But of course only Saint Laurent was home. Only at Saint Laurent was I part of the family. It was like being in an exclusive boarding school.

  The mannequins didn’t give their opinions at fittings. Ever. The only thing you could say was “gorgeous.” Certainly not anything negative. No. Not your job. But there were ways to express you weren’t wild about something. Yves would say, “What’s the matter, don’t you like it?” “Ohnonono, it’s very beautiful …” “But?” “But, um … oh, I don’t know …” Even Loulou and Mme. Muñoz were never critical. Yves didn’t really want to hear it, though sometimes he would withdraw a model himself. “Hmm … I think it’s not quite …” Then everyone hemmed and hawed, straining to find the right words. “Errrr … um … ahem …” Loulou might joke, “Don’t you think it’s a bit too flowery?” And Yves would say, “Hmmm, yes, you’re right, but it’s for my Lebanese clients. I loooove my Lebanese.” Everyone would laugh, but Yves had to start it. Either him or Loulou.

  INÈS DE LA FRESSANGE I walked for Saint Laurent only once, because the house, in its ivory tower, didn’t take girls who worked anywhere else. I was with Karl at Chanel, but not yet exclusively, and Karl’s and Yves’s worlds studiously avoided each other.

  PAULE MONORY Mounia, from Martinique, was an absolute fury. It was war between her and the other girls in the cabine. “That’s my dress!” “No it’s not, it’s mine!!” Those girls weren’t stupid, they knew what would be photographed. They weren’t about to let a beautiful dress they’d spent hours fitting go to some grunt who snuck in from behind. Mounia would ambush Saint Laurent on the street. “Oh, Monsieur, that gown I’m so desperate to wear …” Saint Laurent was a soft touch, even if Loulou didn’t agree. “Oh, but she’s so nice, Mounia, let’s let her have it.”

  MOUNIA OROSEMANE He doesn’t like big breasts … he thinks the mannequins have too much. To erase their bosoms, sometimes he has the girls wear bands—they look like they’re full of milk after giving birth! He has a certain idea of feminine beauty, a bit adolescent, never aggressive, closer to a fictional work of art than a down-to-earth woman.

  LOULOU The black models’ hair was too frizzy, their legs too thin, but they were divine. We were treated like reverse racists, because practically none of our mannequins were white.

  NICOLE DORIER From 1977 to 1985, Mounia had the bride monopoly. There were times when M. Saint Laurent wanted someone else, like Khadija Adams, but he didn’t dare. Mounia knees were fat, it really was the end, but he was too frightened to take the bride away from her, because … okay, we’re getting into another area here… Kirat felt the wind changing and shrewdly bowed out without being pushed out, but Mounia left kicking and screaming. M. Saint Laurent must have said to himself, If Kirat, whom I adore, is leaving, why I am keeping Mounia? It was always me who told the girls when their time was up, but this time I refused; I made Mme. Muñoz do it. But Mounia continued to hound us. “Please, Nicole, just once down the runway—pleeease?” M. Bergé heard me on the phone with her and grabbed it. “Bonjour, ma petite Mounia. Let us get on with our work, Mounia. Good-bye, Mounia.” And poum!, he hung up.

  BRUNO MÉNAGER The sisterhood of the cabine? I’m not so sure. Rebecca Ayoko was a lost child, not as quick or sophisticated as some of the other girls. After one show, Kirat told her that all the models were being paid extra for a photo shoot. Rebecca panicked, her eyes big as saucers. “What? Who? Everyone’s being paid but me? How can that be?” My heart went out to her. It was a joke, especially cruel, as she didn’t have the tools to defend herself.

  Rebecca was born in Ghana, sexually abused before she was three, beaten with a club by her stepfather, utter poverty, living on the street, sleeping on cardboard boxes, her family practiced voodoo, an awful story. As a little girl, she was sent to live with her aunt in Gabon. The aunt made her her slave.

  REBECCA AYOKO At night she tied me to a big table so I wouldn’t run away. I was six, sent to the market every day with a tray of beignets on my head to sell. One day when I turned over the money, my aunt said there was some missing. She spread my legs and pushed fresh chili pepper and ginger inside me. I escaped, squatting in the first puddle of muddy water. To survive, I begged. And I was raped. I was told to squeeze my thighs when the baby came out to suffocate it, but I gave birth to Affie. She had polio. I was thirteen. At one point, my daughter was kidnapped. I feared the worse. You heard things then, that children’s flesh was used for fish bait. Witches. Human sacrifice. I rescued her from a voodoo ceremony just in time.

  I won Miss Cote d’Ivoire and signed with the Glamour agency in Paris. They took 55 percent and didn’t even pay for my composite shots. Among ourselves, the girls in the Saint Laurent cabine sold clothes we didn’t want anymore. I was thrilled when Loulou bought something of mine—“Loulou de La Falaise is taking my jeans!” She had a big heart. She was like a sister: You could talk to her. I was a mannequin, and she gave me her ear. If there was something you weren’t sure you could say to Saint Laurent directly, you took Loulou aside and asked her. Or if you did say something, she defended you. I was being fitted for a suit and made a comment about the fabric; I didn’t think it did the jacket justice. Mme. Muñoz and the assistants pounced on me after—“How dare you?!” Loulou was the only one who reassured me. “There’s nothing to worry about. And as M. Saint Laurent said, you were right.”

  My downfall was braiding my hair in cornrows—what a mistake, what was I thinking?—and showing him a picture of a friend from Guinea, Katoucha Niane, who was desperate to work for the house. Nicole Dorier was fuming: “Who do you think you are, stealing my job!” Katoucha went up at Saint Laurent and I went down. She replaced me, though I continued to have a healthy career elsewhere, Geoffrey Beene, Sonia Rykiel … I dated Stéphane Ferrara, the former boxer, and Dolph Lungren after Grace Jones. I had another child, married this time to an aspiring actor, but he hit me and I pressed charges.

  After the modeling wound down, I made jewelry, and was a hostess at a club, the Buddha Bar, and had a long affair with a Frenchman, running his hotel in East Africa. But he turned out to be a pervert, young girls from the village by the dozen … It was at the beginning of the nineties when things started going bad for me. I’d gone through all the money I’d made as a model and couldn’t pay the rent. I’d literally hide in my apartment, not turning on the TV, so if the bailiff came he would think no one was home. I sold my jewelry in pawnshops, my fur. As I always say, beyond a certain age, a mannequin isn’t worth more than a container of yogurt past its sell-by date. Then I found God. The monastery where I made my First Communion gave me food so I wouldn’t have to stand on line at soup kitchens anymore. I’m on my feet again now.

  First, Katoucha stole Saint Laurent, then my boyfriend. In 2008, her body was fished out of the Seine. It had been floating there for weeks. She lived in a houseboat on the river. She was forty-seven. She disappeared after being dropped off late after a party. It was ruled an accidental death—the autopsy showed a high level of alcohol—but her family is convinced she was murdered. They said she’d recently denounced a drug dealer to the police and that the day before she vanished she told her psychic someone wanted to kill her.

  Saint Laurent and I were like a couple madly in love, then slowly you start to feel the other’s love fading. You try to win it back, and then one day it’s truly over. People around him advised him to move on. He never said anything, never said good-bye… The press office told me. I took the loss badly, disgraced. I dreamed of going back. People at the house told me he missed me, that he kept calling Katoucha “Rebecca.”

  125 Amalia Vair
elli.

  126 Dothi Dumonteil.

  23

  Lady Libertine

  ROSI LEVAI I only knew Maxime as John McKendry’s wife when I worked at the Met in the late sixties. Then in 1981, I moved to 260 Fifth Aveune, a former rug warehouse at Twenty-sixth Street, only to discover she was my downstairs neighbor. Loulou bought her mother that loft after John died. Maxime was resourceful, because she had to pay her own way, always needing to make a couple of hundred dollars, giving cooking lessons at home, catering … She rented a room to a young man who walked her dogs and became a great friend, Bradley Lander. He was with her till she died. Bradley’s rather fey—and a mystery to all who know him. I believe he’s an orphan. He’d be writing soap operas for Canal+, then take off for Salamabad during the monsoon. If you asked why, he’d say, “I love traveling off-season.”

  KATELL LE BOURHIS I met Bradley with Geraldine Stutz, the head of Bendel’s when Bendel’s was something. To Gerry and Maxime, he was like an adopted son.

  JOHN RICHARDSON Bradley’s always at the beck and call of others. He’s brilliant looking after older ladies, latterly Mrs. Thingamy from Atlanta, Anne Cox Chambers. Bradley was a godsend to Maxime.