Loulou & Yves

  FRANÇOISE PICOLI Even if she was cool and laid-back about being photographed and interviewed, Loulou loved the attention, Saint Laurent even more. If he was asleep at his desk and you told him a photographer was waiting, he jerked to with a huge smile, ready for the camera. One morning, I came in and Loulou was sitting upright in her chair, fully made-up, hair done and dressed to the teeth in a black glazed-satin suit and fox toque. We were all expected to make an effort—no jeans. But done up like that? Loulou was brilliant. She had a lunch or a shoot that day but also a normal day of work, and this was how she’d dressed for it.

  The original W specialized in roundups of society ladies around the world showing and explaining how they laid their luncheon tables, stayed skinny, cozied a hotel room. For a travel story on how they packed their beauty supplies, there was Loulou in Paris; Attorney General William Smith’s wife, Jean, in Washington; Park Avenue supremo Pat Buckley; the actor Robert Stack’s wife, Rosemarie, in Los Angeles; and former model Pilar Crespi in Rome. We did the shoot at Loulou’s apartment, there in the building where the Resistance leader Jean Moulin had lived and the painter Chaïm Soutine, a Russian Jew, had hidden out during the war. Loulou used a red terry bath towel to tie up all her unguents and ablutions, tramp-style but minus the stick.

  LOULOU I usually go away after periods of intense work, and all I do is knot the corners of the towel and drop it—along with my jewels—into a canvas carpenter’s bag my mother gave me.

  During a break in the shoot, Loulou had left the room to get something, there was a good-looking men’s linen jacket hanging on the back of a chair, so I did what any fashion gumshoe would do: I looked at the label. I could have asked her where Thadée bought his clothes, but it wasn’t the kind of question she invited, we weren’t on that sort of footing. Of course she caught me. “What are you doing with Thadée’s jacket?” I remember thinking how easy it would have been for her to spare me the embarrassment.

  ————————

  LESLIE HAYDEN SHERR Bernard Pfriem died in 1996. He was seventy-nine. I’d met him in 1981, when he made a presentation on his school in Provence at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where I was a student. I remember it so vividly, his black turtleneck sweater, gray hair, his charming, dignified manner. I knew in that moment I would spend my junior year there in Provence with him. As candidly revolting as it is to even contemplate what you’re telling me about him and Loulou, I could see it happening. I never really experienced it, but I observed it. Certainly he had a reputation as a leering—he had a letch quality to him. But for all his failings, there are many fine things one could and would still say about him.

  Bernard developed a tumor that extended from jaw to ear, the lower quadrant of his face, I don’t remember which side. They operated, and facial muscles were cut, impacting his eye and cheekbone area. We were meeting once, and he was standing on the sidewalk, and I remember thinking that if you approached him from the good side, you’d never know. He took such pride in his appearance, even though he was maimed, he was exactly the same.

  STEVEN M. L. ARONSON Anne was a full-on patron of Bernard’s art school in Lacoste. She had resigned from the board of the Museum of Modern Art because the meetings bored her, yet remained staunchly, if unaccountably, committed to this losing operation in the Luberon. She had recently given Bernard a lift to France on her Gulfstream, and spoke guardedly—out of delicacy—of the physical shape he was in. Some time after this, I received an invitation to a party Nancy Wellin was giving in his honor at her apartment in River House. Nancy was another supporter of Bernard’s—a Brown from Houston who had a Renaissance-style mansion in Ménerbes, one village over from Lacoste, and who would go on to also buy the house a couple of doors down that Picasso had given Dora Maar when they broke up. At River House, I was shocked, in the sense of electricity, to see that Bernard had been disfigured, his face a mask of Halloween horror. Here was living proof of what one’s body could do to one. We embraced, made small talk, but I left there wondering, How could this man, who was, after all, so vain, show that face in public?

  I made a point of going to Bernard’s memorial service at the Century Association. Alexis, who had defied Maxime by attending, eulogized him as a father figure. He was followed by the famous photographer David Douglas Duncan, who had taught at Lacoste at some point. Reminding us that he had documented the grisliest atrocities in the theater of war, David stated that it was his friend Bernard who had sustained the greatest visual hit of any human being he had ever seen. He then visibly and audibly choked up, and could continue only with great effort.

  After Bernard’s death, someone gave Anne the beautiful portrait he had painted of Maxime in the first flush of falling in love with her, and one night after dinner, Anne graciously presented it to Maxime. Out of Anne’s earshot, Maxime told me she couldn’t wait to get back to the guesthouse to burn it in the fireplace. Shades of Lady Churchill and the Graham Sutherland!

  ————————

  POLLY DEVLIN Unpublished essay, about 1996 Went to dinner last night with John Stefanidis in his amazing house. Forty minutes’ drive through the Dorset countryside but his dinner parties were worth any amount of journeying. Loulou de La Falaise was there, exquisite, jangling, flying high on coke, prancing about like a caparisoned circus whippet. Tiny long wrists, narrow long legs, beautiful shoulders, her black sweater slipping off, a crimson cummerbund, a minuscule purple skirt. I thought of all the descriptions I’d read of vivid jeweled women in the thirties, swooping, enchanting, showing off, making theatre out of themselves, their appearance. I remembered the story of Madame X by Sargent, to view whose progress down the steps of the Paris Opé ra King Ludwig had journeyed from Bavaria. Loulou is such a woman. You would climb on a chair to see her, as people did for the Gunning sisters, who died dreadfully ravaged by lead poisoning from the powder they used to whiten their skin. Much the same kind of destruction was going on here, though more self-consciously. Her talk was utterly foolish. She said, “Ireland. Oh, I remember Ireland. I’d just got married. We came to the village, the children were all lined up to greet us. Poverty, I didn’t know such poverty existed in Europe, the bare feet, the tattered dresses, faces pinched.”

  “What, lined up waiting to greet you?” John said, incredulous.

  “Just that, and here was I.” She threw her arms into the air, did a somersault across the room, a Piero di Cosimo tumble of crimson and purple amid emeralds, and was on her feet again as though she hadn’t moved, the gold lamé ribbons tied around her forearms—such elegant little forearms, one could hear Flaubert munching his words over them—slid down and stopped at her wrist bones with a thud. They weren’t, I realized, lamé at all, but real, heavy gold, intricately woven into a simulacrum of fabric. “Just nineteen, a mini to here”—Loulou drew an imaginary line around her hips, lapped in the cummerbund—“Desmond, he just pulled me along.” She skittered forward, heels sliding under the momentum of the strong invisible FitzGerald hand, her champagne glass held high.

  The butler came in, he didn’t speak; John looked at him and nodded. The butler disappeared. John rose to his feet. We all got up to go into dinner.

  “And those children, in those clothes.” She was skipping.

  ————————

  AUDREY SECNAZI Loulou was the first to arrive in the studio in the morning. The first thing she did was read the paper. No fashion magazines. She had strong ideas about politics: Left, completely Left. “Pasqua’s so funny, with his Marseille accent,” I said one day. Charles Pasqua was minister of the interior in the late eighties, firmly on the Right. “That’s just it, Audrey,” Loulou said. “Mé fie toi. Don’t be fooled.”

  BRUNO MÉNAGER The day began with Paule Monory sharpening cups of 1B pencils—2Bs if Monsieur wanted a thicker line—so they were ready for him when he arrived. Loulou and Anne-Marie stood perched on high heels side by side in front of the big fitting mirror, preening, primping, chatting, turning this way and that
, giving their outfits a final once-over while they awaited the boss. Loulou would try her belt one way, then another, reapply her lipstick, make a moue, fish her hairbrush out of the chaos of her handbag, add another necklace. One day, her eyes met Anne-Marie’s in the mirror and they burst out laughing with the vanity of it all. But what a show! They always wanted to look their best for M. Saint Laurent.

  Like a movie star, Loulou was aware of her public. I tried to be discreet, using the mirrors in the studio to study her movements, the way she tilted her head… I never saw her at work in the drugged states that I saw M. Saint Laurent. Her detox cures in Switzerland were over by the time I started, but I’d heard about them, how she’d lost all her teeth, things I didn’t want or need to know.

  JEAN-PAUL KNOTT Every morning the same ritual: M. Saint Laurent would arrive, Loulou and Mme. Muñoz stood up to kiss him, then the three of them sat down, he at his desk—a glass-covered board on a pair of cheap trestles—with them on the other side. They could stay like that for two or three hours without a word, Loulou and Mme. Muñoz waiting for M. Saint Laurent to make a move, to start drawing, anything… If nothing happened, Loulou would eventually think of something silly to show him to relax the atmosphere.

  She and Mme. Muñoz were like mothers to us. If you had a romantic problem or looked unhappy, they noticed and talked to you about it. Loulou was worried I might have to do military service—the whole house was. At Christmas, the studio took up a collection for presents for Loulou and Mme. Muñoz. They gave separate gifts to each of us, handpicked, but went shopping together for them. When I started my own company, I couldn’t afford a show. Loulou wanted to support me and said she wasn’t going to let Pierre Bergé stop her from being photographed for a magazine wearing my first collection.

  She organized everything for the shoot, the hair, the makeup. When I did have a show, I invited everyone from Saint Laurent. She was the only one who came. The others were too frightened of Pierre Bergé.

  FLORENCE TOUZAIN As assistants, we were constantly told how privileged we were, because we worked in the heart of the house with M. Saint Laurent. But the privilege was also begrudged us. The years when the studio was like a church, or prison, if you prefer, were ending. The rules about who could be admitted were relaxed. The door was more open.

  JEAN-PAUL KNOTT My desk was right behind the refrigerator, filled with nonalcoholic beer for M. Saint Laurent. Then he switched to water so Moujik could chew the bottles all day. The crunching drove everyone mad. Of course you couldn’t say anything.

  Working at Saint Laurent, you were sheltered, pampered, proud to be in the service of others: M. Saint Laurent and Loulou. If they asked for something, everyone ran to be the one to bring it to them. It was another world, another reality, everyone so polite and respectful. It was paradise. And what ceremony! When Mme. Muñoz and Loulou, or M. Pierre Bergé and M. Saint Laurent, didn’t want to be heard, they’d go into Mme. Ida’s office. It was like a civilized household where the parents leave the room to argue—M. Bergé is a famous screamer—and the children—us, the assistants—button their lips.

  Mme. Saint Laurent came by often, modeling her sable coat for her son. “C’est trè s joli, ne c’est pas, Yves?” When you phoned avenue Marceau, you got the recorded greeting, “Yves Saint Laurent, bonjour,” and La Callas for the hold music. When Loulou called a vendor, it was “Oui, ici Mam’zelle de La Falaise.” No irony.

  AUDREY SECNAZI The first thing you were told when you were hired is that what happens in the studio never leaves it. I began as an illustrator in 1990, a period when M. Saint Laurent was not at all well. I don’t think I saw him at all that year. Every sketch, even multiples of the same model, was an original—no photocopies. It was very important that the drawings have his line, because they’re what the ateliers worked from. I signed the drawings with M. Saint Laurent’s name, and even copies of his book, Lulu.

  Loulou found the beautiful detail everywhere. If we were flipping through a book, she’d exclaim over something tiny and hidden in a picture everyone else had missed. The cruise and prefall collections were the only freedom she had. M. Saint Laurent practically never saw them. She gave everything she couldn’t give elsewhere. She wanted to say so much, the clothes could be a bit of a muddle.

  This was the great licensing period, when YSL had contracts all over the world, cigarettes in the States, aprons in Japan. We needed a boy in the studio to do the physical work. I taught drawing at night, and Mme. Muñoz asked if one of my students would be interested. “Someone young and good-looking and lively,” Loulou added.

  “Guillaume,” he was called. Guillaume turns up for his interview, tall, black leather kind of guy, face of an angel, body to die for, pierced all over. “A few less piercings,” Mme. Muñoz says. On his first day, he’s at the refrigerator, and Monsieur comes up behind him, extending his hand and smiling. “May I introduce you to Yves Saint Laurent… ” “It doesn’t matter how good the guy is as long as he wakes up M. Saint Laurent a bit,” Loulou had said—and it worked.

  Everything was made so easy for us. There was someone to do everything—a button person, the handling department to follow up on fabric orders… It was how Loulou worked, coddled, for thirty years.

  JüRGEN DOERING If you worked in the studio but not on the couture, you still had to be there for the couture fittings. Saint Laurent’s thinking was, How can you understand my style if you don’t understand my process? He didn’t want you to break your head for him just for the pleasure of seeing you sweat. Even if you sat on a chair all day watching, for him that was work. In the beginning, I said to myself, Nobody does anything here. With my German guilt, I thought I always had to be doing something. Saint Laurent explained to me, “Sometimes a week goes by and you don’t lift a pencil, but you observe, and that’s work, too.”

  PAULE MONORY Nineteen-ninety-two was a complicated year—the year M. Bergé gave Robert Merloz his own line. They were having an affair. M. Bergé was more than twice Robert’s age—sixty-two to Robert’s twenty-six. M. Bergé pulled him from the studio and put him in charge of furs. His fur collections were a big success.

  Obviously, Robert’s ready-to-wear line was not something M. Saint Laurent and M. Bergé decided together to back. How it was broken to M. Saint Laurent, I don’t know and can’t imagine. It would’ve have been one thing if M. Bergé had financed Robert himself, but he used company money—it was M. Saint Laurent’s money, too! Added to which, Robert and M. Bergé were lovers. There was a lot of tension, jealousy. M. Saint Laurent was in a foul, foul mood.

  FLORENCE TOUZAIN M. Bergé’s affair with Robert destabilized the whole studio. The awkwardness was excruciating. Loulou felt it, we all did. The whole thing made me smile, more than anything else. The wolf had been fed. Mme. Saint Laurent was adorable, attending Robert’s show and telling the press what a shame it was that her son had been made to suffer over so little. But M. Bergé always looked after her, making sure M. Saint Laurent’s family had everything they needed.

  NICOLE DORIER The only time I saw M. Saint Laurent falter was during the Merloz scandal. He had a blockage, sending out the same jacket four times. Only the fabrics changed.

  AUDREY SECNAZI M. Saint Laurent sent us a huge bouquet of flowers afterward to apologize for his mood. He loved his studio. But even forgetting the Merloz drama, it wasn’t an easy place to work. If a couple of us were looking through Vogue together, we kept our voices down. At collection time, it came naturally to wear black or beige so as not to perturb the eye. If you needed to phone, you went into Mme. Ida’s office because really, you couldn’t disturb M. Saint Laurent. The atmosphere was only a little more relaxed when he wasn’t there. Maybe you didn’t leave the room to call, and there was more conversation about gardening and recipes.

  M. Saint Laurent led you to think he was oblivious; in fact, he saw everything. On his way to the fridge, he glanced over my shoulder. “May I see that drawing, please?” I handed him the one on top. “No, not that one
.” He’d seen a small sketch off on the corner of my desk, practically hidden. He wanted that one.

  JANE PENDRY Loulou had to sign off on me before I could be hired as the company’s first accessories manager. I’d seen her from a distance, this terrifyingly chic person with a cigarette and clanking bangles. One imagined her lying prone in bed with a glass of champagne. Then when I met her, she made me feel so at ease, she was so down to earth. At the interview, I must have said, “Oh, my husband, Jean-Pierre Masclet, took that famous photograph of you,” and that made it yet easier. It was M. Saint Laurent’s favorite picture of Loulou, head cocked in a cloud of cigarette smoke, wistful. She and I bonded over England and being English. In England, British women who live in Paris have always been considered slightly dangerous, almost scarily glamorous. But we couldn’t understand how women in the U.K. gloried in paying £2.99 for a Marks & Spencer jumper and felt there was something not quite right about wearing a fabulous Saint Laurent suit.

  M. Bergé was incredibly paternalistic about the way he ran the company. “You have certain duties, we pay you well, you’re part of the family, we own you. You not only have the honor of working for the most extraordinary designer who ever walked the face of the earth, but you’ll stay in the best hotels, you’ll be treated beautifully.” And we were. Every Christmas, you got something personal from M. Saint Laurent, in rock crystal, inscribed, made by Goossens and overseen by Loulou. People who’d started at the house at eighteen never left. They’d arrive as interns and then move around in different posts, very organic. At the thirty-year celebration in 1992, it was extraordinary how many people had been there from day dot.