Loulou & Yves

by Christopher Petkanas

  Maxime on-screen, I must say, was in her height and glory. She was playing a marchesa who tries to pull a fast one in matchmaking on her wealthy houseguest, Count Dracula, by passing off her beautiful daughters as the virgins he craves, when in fact they are being ravished around the clock by the woodsman, played by Joe Dallesandro, and are nothing if not used goods. One of the reviews said that “Maxime McKendry imparts a very real sense of desperation in her part as a declining aristo grasping at straws in a changing economic climate.” Could Veblen have put it any better?

  The morning after the premiere, Carlyn reported for duty at her charge’s father’s apartment at UN Plaza. The charge inquired as to how she had spent her first night in New York, and Carlyn got carried away and unintentionally rehashed the plot of Dracula in painful detail, including what one reviewer called “the limb-lopping climax.” Whatever, they went on to become great friends. A quarter of a century later, someone told me that Maxime was living biblically with a rich girl more than half her age who had once been the victim of a catastrophic speedboat accident. Her inamorata’s name rang a faint bell, which then proceeded to clang: Maxime de La Falaise and Sarah St. George had found each other!

  DETMAR BLOW Maxime sought out my wife, Isabella. She was in London in 1993 and rang us about an exhibition of her rugs at Christopher Farr and would we come. She was one of a pack of people who were keen to know us, the new kids on the block. Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Philip Tracey were Issie’s protégés; she was their muse. Christian Louboutin wanted to befriend us, to piggyback on Issie.

  CHRISTOPHER FARR Maxime endeared herself by having lunch in our local pub, sporting gold earrings that revealed themselves under inspection to be a cock and balls! Included in the show was a Prohibition-era bootlegger’s coffin built specifically for smuggling that Maxime painted with a swirling abstract. It did not find a buyer.

  DETMAR BLOW Issie was cautious about these new friendships. She had no interest in Maxime. But after the opening, she was charmed enough to invite her to Hilles, our house in Gloucestor. Issie and Sarah St. George were school friends, they’d gone to Heathfield together. When Sarah heard Maxime was coming for the weekend, she sent a Bentley round to collect her. Maxime impressed me. She was brave, defiant—“Okay, I’m poor, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m going down bohemian.”

  Nearly thirty-five years separated Sarah St. George and Maxime, pictured at Sarah’s mas in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Sarah bought it after she and Maxime decided to set up housekeeping together. W magazine did handstands to avoid calling them lovers, but their relationship didn’t last long, that way. © Sarah St. George. Courtesy of the holder.

  ROSI LEVAI Sarah saw Maxime as her entrée into the world of fashion and artists and bohemia. She fell for her, made a play for her and whisked her off. Maxime said, “Who’d have thought my guardian angel would be a woman?” It was a mad flirtation on both sides. Maxime, almost thirty-five years older than Sarah, was flattered at being wooed. I’m sure she’d had dalliances with women before, a bit of messing around now and again, but I think Sarah was her first relationship. It was quite heavy. Maxime behaved like a young woman with her new lover. She was completely open about it, saying it was meant to be, a gift from heaven that allowed her to make an exit back to Europe. They went shopping for a house in Provence, found one in Saint-Rémy, and Maxime left New York for good. Perhaps by saying “I love Sarah,” she was trying to convince herself that taking this opportunity was okay.

  Sarah’s maternal grandfather, William Hill, founded and gave his name to one of England biggest bookmakers. Her father, Edward, was the son of a Maltese count and a conspicuous figure in the British racing world as owner of the Lucayan Stud at Newmarket. Along the way, he privatized the Grand Bahama Port Authority and filled his pockets. Sarah carries on his good work.

  NICKY HASLAM The St. Georges were nouveau riche, getting a great boost socially when Edward married the Duke of Grafton’s daughter, Lady Henrietta FitzRoy, Mistress of the Robes to the queen. Sarah likes a royal herself. She’s great pals with the Kents. Maxime was many things, but I wouldn’t have thought a dyke. So I was rather surprised. Could Sarah have been a girlfriend of Rupert Birley’s at one point?

  TARA REDDI Sarah didn’t seem Maxime’s type. She can be crude. Many in Maxime’s circle didn’t like her. Before Maxime left for Provence, Roger Prigent, the antiques dealer, gave a dinner and invited Prince and Princess Michael of Kent—“the Rent-a-Kents,” as they’re called, because anyone can have them, for a price. Sarah is mesmerized by them, but they’re nothing but air. Maxime couldn’t bear the Rent-a-Kents and at Roger’s dinner made sotto voce jokes about them all night.

  AMY FINE COLLINS Khoi Nguyen from “Page Six” was there and the next day ran a blind item, “What society widow has recently taken up with a pretty young woman?” There was tittering about Maxime being in a lesbian relationship. It seemed like a logical last act.

  ALLEN ROSENBAUM Maxime’s quote in the Post was, “After so many men, I decided it was maybe time to try a woman.” She expressed it as boredom: “Why not?” You know that famous Chinese saying, “If you’ve tried a thousand boys and you haven’t found the right one, maybe you’re not looking for a boy.” That was Maxime’s sentiment.

  DAVID CROLAND Loulou had a conversation with Sarah, saying, “Listen, if you’re with Mummy, you’re with Mummy, you’re going to take care of her, because she’s not selling and moving and then”—and Sarah promised she would.

  INÈS DE LA FRESSANGE Loulou made fun of Maxime and Sarah. “My mother, would you believe it, has a girlfriend. C’est genial! Fantastique!”

  KATELL LE BOURHIS Maxime was tall, with the thighs of a racehorse and no waist. Apart from her bust, she was made like a man. When the house in Provence was being restored, she went around half-naked, in gas-station overalls with the zip open and Saint Laurent lipstick, the famous fuchsia one, number nineteen, it’s still in production. She wasn’t bothered about nudity. If her robe slipped from her shoulders at breakfast, it stayed where it fell.

  JOHN RICHARDSON Maxime was in a fearful state, absolutely terrified that somebody would say to Sarah, “Listen, she’s just in it for—she’s on the make, she wants the cash, she needs to be rescued from imminent poverty.” And someone did actually threaten to do so. Regardless of the sexuality of it, they had a genuine relationship. God knows, Maxime was tremendously jealous when Sarah had other girlfriends. Sarah got a fan letter, a student from Bristol University had read about her and was after her. I was there in Saint-Rémy when Sarah brought her to stay! They had quite a long affair. But Maxime didn’t have a lesbian bone in her body.

  JOHN STEFANIDIS You never know the secrets of the bedchamber. What went on there only God and John Richardson know for sure. If someone falls in love with you and is ready to give you the earth, as it were, it’s difficult to resist if your circumstances are tricky. But I don’t think Maxime was opportunistic.

  KATE BERNARD Maxime’s attitude about sex with Sarah was, “Oh, you know, darling, one just lies back and thinks of England.”

  CYNTHIA SAINSBURY Edward St. George was quite unhappy about Sarah living in Provence, calling it “a place for impecunious nonentities.” Anne Chambers lived the next town over from Sarah, in Saint-Étienne-du-Grès. Do you suppose that’s who he meant?

  ALLEN ROSENBUAM Maxime wasn’t allowed to answer the telephone in case it was Sarah’s father. She and Sarah would be on a train, the train would pull into the station and Maxime would waltz off, leaving Sarah with her one arm to get the bags down.

  NICKY HASLAM Maxime was the last person to say, “Darling, can I help?” But Sarah could do it. She quite relished being noncrippled though crippled, if you see what I mean.

  CHRISTOPHER MASON Sarah kept an apartment in New York. Princess Michael, Marie Christine, had a speaking engagement and was staying with her. Sarah arrived late for the lecture and Marie Christine—in front of the entire assembly—remonstrated, “Dearest, must I alway
s remind you to be on time?” “Well, you see, ma’am,” Sarah explained, “having only one arm, it’s difficult to dress.” “Dearest,” said the princess, “I presume when you woke up this morning you knew you only had one arm. One would think you would adjust your schedule accordingly.” And the thing is, they are great friends.

  DETMAR BLOW Issie and I stayed with Maxime and Sarah in Saint-Rémy. Issie was protective toward Sarah. Lucie and Daniel were on the scene now. We were all wary of the Falaises being leeches—sharks looking for fresh meat. Robin warned us Maxime could turn vicious. Which she did. “Detmar eats so much, he’s raiding the fridge in the middle of the night,” followed by great guffaws. I took it lying down. You can’t attack an old woman.

  ROSI LEVAI Maxime and Sarah’s relationship didn’t last long, that way. The bloom was off, Sarah had done what she set out to do. She took up with the Moroccan maid’s daughter and made no bones about it. Maxime didn’t care. There was no pretense of, “Oh, I’ve lost my darling Sarah.” Sarah was her meal ticket. But when the summer came round, she’d say to Maxime, “This house is costing me a lot of money, I can rent it for forty thousand dollars and you have to move out for a couple of months.” So Maxime would stay in Anne Chambers’s guesthouse, waited on royally by Bradley. He had followed Maxime to Provence and was living with her at Sarah’s.

  STEVEN M. L. ARONSON Before they met, Anne, who has always been the embodiment of refinement, told me that she had heard Maxime was “a degenerate.” I protested that she was merely a decadent. Anne said, “That’s splitting hairs.” But Anne has kind of movements of the heart, and some go-between or other tugged on its strings. “What else could I do but take her in? She’s old, poor and alone.” Anne quickly came to like and even admire Maxime for the great trouper she was. And Maxime, for her part, was exceedingly deferential to Anne—altogether correct. She could certainly trot out those beautiful En-glish manners when she needed to.

  Everyone at Anne’s was aware of the hours Maxime spent on the phone, calling all over the planet. This was before the Internet, when calls were not free. How big was the bill going to be? Ten thousand dollars? Twenty thousand? Maxime was known for leaving a trail, for being the kind of person who, once she stays in a hotel, that’s it, she goes on the list and is never allowed back. Her relationship with Anne would not survive a major abuse of hospitality. But then the bill came and, instead of a showdown, there was a check from Maxime accounting for every single call, down to the last centime.

  TARA REDDI It was an improbable friendship. Anne is not scintillating conversation. Quiet. Doesn’t say much. Maxime and Bradley sang for their supper.

  KATELL LE BOURHIS Anne brought over the New York City Ballet every summer. A stage worthy of an opera house was erected in the garden for just one night. Anne even allowed Maxime to take her horrible dogs on her Gulfstream. They farted all the way to New York. No one could breathe. Maxime would have liked a chambre de bonne in Paris but couldn’t afford it. So she was a bit sad, lying in bed in Saint-Rémy and drinking vodka.

  JEAN-NOëL LIAUT By the late nineties, Maxime was already curating her image, like Dietrich. I’d hoped to interview her for the Givenchy book, but she begged off. “I’m happy to talk to you, but only on the telephone. I don’t want you to see me. I’ve changed so physically, I’m unrecognizable.” She’d been drinking. She wasn’t coherent.

  PETER WEBB Leonor Fini’s portrait of Maxime ended up in Saint-Rémy, hung in the stairwell, badly lit—you could barely see it—and damaged. I was horrified and told Maxime so: “You know, this is a very good painting, and it’s from a very interesting period in Leonor’s life, her portraits are a gallery of the most interesting people in Paris of that time, this is one of them and I feel it’s a pity.” I was working on my monograph of Leonor and wanted to photograph it, but Maxime wouldn’t let me, because of the condition. She promised to have it restored and send a picture, but never did.

  JOëL FOURNIER With Fati—Fatima128—as Sarah’s girlfriend, the atmosphere in the house became sleazy. “Fati, darling, scratch my back, darling.” Girls’ stuff. Fati moved into Maxime and Sarah’s room, Maxime moved across the hall and life went on. Princess Caroline has a house in Saint-Rémy and came to dinner. Maxime showed her around, stopping to point out three pots above the fireplace. “These are the ashes of my dog Patch, my dog Baby Butch and my husband John McKendry.” She could never remember whose was whose.

  KATELL LE BOURHIS Maxime hated Fatima’s being served by her mother at breakfast. She preferred to think of her as Sarah’s private secretary—“Fatima’s very good at packing.” Maxime was totally dependent on Sarah financially and was always afraid she would ask her to leave. But, except in summer, Sarah never turned her out. Maxime was extremely grateful to Sarah for installing her in high luxury with a full-time maid and Bradley to entertain her.

  ROSI LEVAI Whatever one thinks of Sarah, she was noble. Loulou was grateful to have Maxime taken off her hands by Bradley; I’m sure she paid him. Bradley was her caregiver. He tells me now the Moroccan girl puts on airs and graces like she’s the maî tresse de maison.

  HAMISH BOWLES Have you met the girlfriend? Wildly glamorous, beautifully dressed and sophisticated she is, too. I think that’s still going on. A change from Maxime, who had a reputation for being cruel. Not that she was cruel to Sarah. Not, I mean, beyond calling her “the one-armed bandit.” Which was presumably affectionate.

  SARAH ST. GEORGE Maxime was—not a mother figure, but she did give me what she was never able to give Loulou. She was attentive and caring and all the things somebody might say she hadn’t been to her daughter.

  JAMES KILLOUGH I moved back to New York from Paris but never saw Maxime again after the Etruscan vase episode. But we were never more than a couple of degrees apart socially via the demimonde river whose current runs strong through Manhattan, era after era, so I was fully up to date when I met Marcello on the street in the late nineties. His once abundant hair was almost fully gray, his sex appeal utterly dissipated. “Apparently Maxime slipped on the sidewalk outside her building, broke her hip, but managed to drag herself into the lobby,” I told him. “Then she successfully sued the building. She’s living in the South of France now with her lesbian lover.” I love that she became a lesbian in her seventies. Or maybe she was that the whole time and, like the Tic Tac stand, I just couldn’t see her for what she really was.

  127 YSL had become a publicly traded company in 1989. Pierre and Yves sold it in 1993 to Elf Sanofi, the pharmaceuticals arm of Elf Aquitaine, the giant oil conglomerate owned by the French state.

  128 Fatima Zahra.

  24

  Slogging Through the Nineties

  GABRIEL DE LA FALAISE Emmita died in 1992, ruined, no cook, no maître d’hôtel, barely a majordomo. Her sister Lyna and I went straight to the prefecture to refuse succession, because we knew she had debts. Loulou came to the funeral and brought Lucie and Daniel. The only thing anyone could talk about were Lucie’s red heels—such high ones!

  ————————

  MARION HUME “The Eminence Chic,” The Independent, December 20, 1992 There is a power behind most thrones, and Loulou de La Falaise has been Saint Laurent’s creative soul mate since the early seventies. Now she’s getting some of the credit …

  [Loulou] designs the YSL jewelry, and for the first time will be credited for doing so at next month’s couture show in Paris. Though the pieces won’t bear her name—“Imagine, I’d always have to make such huge jewels to get it all on”—she will be noted in the programme.

  In any other couture house, there would be nothing unusual in this. But one of the enduring myths of Saint Laurent has been that he did everything himself. That is, until last July, when Robert Merloz, the designer of the YSL fur line and proté gé of the company moneyman Pierre Bergé, launched his own collection under the YSL umbrella. The show went down like a rock. But it was significant; it was the company’s first public admission that there was more creative inp
ut than just Yves at 5, avenue Marceau.

  Few people in the fashion world will be surprised at the [Loulou] “revelation.” Saint Laurent aficionados have known for years that Loulou was behind the jewelry, and in any case, the pieces themselves let the cat out of the bag. Necklaces strung with shards of jet; amulets of blue glass on black, like ice on a crag; chokers of what look like pale pebbles bashed smooth on a blustery Breton beach, all have the froideur, the cool brittleness of Loulou de La Falaise. And the sheaths of bracken, dip-dyed gold and clustered with garnet berries, the huge collars of blood-red jewels, and next season’s gilded chinoiserie, all share her very distinctive grandeur.

  Meeting Loulou is always unnerving. She is friendly enough, but her scornful gaze makes her critical in spite of herself. Rake-thin, resolutely chic and feline-faced, she looks like the cat that turned its nose up at the cream… She talks in the slow, rusty way of the bilingual speaker … whose turns of phrase are not quite up to date, and uses quaint terms like “jolly” and strange expressions to describe life at YSL: “We are used to our own soup …”

  The French expression “Il faut suffrir pour être belle” could have been coined for Loulou de La Falaise. The jewelry she designs can bow the head with its colossal weight. The earrings, while magnificent, tug on the lobes. Some of the pieces are so heavy, you need a neck brace to carry them off. Loulou, of course, puts the lot on her tiny frame and holds her head high.

  INÈS DE LA FRESSANGE In the fifties and sixties, Roger Vivier was the only designer whose work for a couturier—shoes for Dior—carried his name. No one knew that Fulco di Verdura did the jewelry for Chanel, or that Elsa Triolet129 designed Schiaparelli’s aspirin necklace, or that Louis Aragon130 made it. I doubt Madeleine Vionnet was recognized on the street. Loulou wouldn’t have wanted to be. She wasn’t frustrated by any lack of recognition.