Loulou & Yves

  The fashion house was sold, the enchanted circle gradually dispersed… The truth is I know nothing about it, but I’ve seen the way [Cé lia] files things away, keeping only the bare minimum, turns every page… They recently broadcast a documentary on television about the fashion house that was shot shortly before the end. Cé lia does not appear, probably because she is so camera-shy, but maybe because she’s already left the company, which would see change beyond her recognition …

  NICOLE DORIER Just as the doors were about to close for good, Bergé announced that a M. Bouygues was buying the couture unit from Artemis, Pinault’s holding company, and turning it into “the first multibrand couture house” with five designers. Suddenly, all 158 of us had our jobs back. Bouygues produced Dior and Hermès ready-to-wear, and Bergé was all for him.

  I was on the internal committee at Saint Laurent that looked after employees’ interests. It was clear to us and our union that Bouygues and Pinault were in cahoots to bankrupt the couture so Pinault could economize on payouts—and that Bergé would get money under the table for endorsing the deal. Loulou was on track to lose two years’ salary in severance. When we got to court and the wind changed and it looked like the judge would reject Pinault’s bid, Bergé switched sides and joined us against Bouygues.

  AUDREY SECNAZI Before the court decided in our favor, I confronted M. Bergé. “C’est la vie,” he said. “Life isn’t fair.” Obviously, Bougyues was a fraud, 131 but Loulou trusted everyone like a child. She wanted to believe in him. “It’ll give us another chance.”

  BEATRICE PEYRANI Weary of fighting … Artemis threw in the towel and ceded Yves Saint Laurent Haute Couture to Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent for one euro. Artemis announced that the handover would be accompanied by a recapitalization of the company substantially higher than the €10 million it had planned with Bouygues, hastening to underscore that henceforth the fate of the employees was entirely and once again in the hands of Pierre Bergé … The employees committee approved an €18.4 million severance plan, €4.4 million of which came from Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent’s own pockets.

  AUDREY SECNAZI When the committee went through the books, we discovered that Thadée was on the payroll, too, a full-fledged employee earning the same as Loulou, her salary divided in two for tax reasons. Their country house in Boury-en-Vexin, near Giverny, was a gift from the company, at least in part, because Loulou had begun to say how she didn’t own an apartment, that Paris was too expensive.

  “Everyone laughed at Bouygues,” she told me, “but my flat had always been taken care of, so I never thought about buying one. Then suddenly the house closes and it’s not paid for anymore.” People in the company thought Loulou exaggerated her situation, but I understood: She needed to work.

  NICOLE DORIER Anne-Marie wasn’t happy with her exit deal but didn’t want to fight, so her husband came and banged on the table and threatened Bergé. You think you’re so special, you can’t imagine you’d be told, “You’ve gotten enough out of us all these years.”

  AUDREY SECNAZI What I heard and believe is that M. Bergé gave €300,000 each to Loulou, Mme. de Ludinghausen and Mme. Muñoz. Une “enveloppe.” At the end. As a thank-you.

  COLOMBE PRINGLE I’m sure Pierre gave Loulou money at this time. He gives money to a lot of people. It’s one of his specialties, his qualities, to help the people around him. When I see the way he behaves with his friends, I can’t believe he didn’t do the same for Loulou.

  LAURENCE BENAÏM I don’t think Loulou walked away with anything when the house closed beyond what she was legally due. There was no gift.

  PETER DUNHAM Loulou, Betty, Anne-Marie, Pierre, Yves—they were all in it together, for fuck’s sake, for decades. But I don’t have the feeling those women came out very well from the sale—that a few million dollars were doled out to these principal partners. Yves had nieces and nephews he probably took care of, and his mother. But what did two old queens want with so much money when they had no one particular to leave it to?

  MARISA BERENSON I have my own thoughts on Loulou’s renumeration and whether she was undervalued, but I’d rather … I think there should’ve been more recognition, personally. She was too humble and didn’t know how to put herself forward. She wasn’t sufficiently compensated when the house was sold. But it’s a bit difficult … one can’t really talk about it openly. That she had to finance her own business when she was who she was is a mystery to me.

  131 In 2008 and 2009, Patrice Bouygues served a fifteen-month prison sentence for misuse of assets of one of his clothing factories, conduct forcing a court-ordered liquidation. Employees received €1,500 in severance. Most had worked for the factory for thirty or more years.

  26

  Loulou, Inc.

  LAURENCE BENAÏM Loulou looked at the future and was afraid. Time to negotiate the bend in the road, to realize you can’t stay out until 4:00 a.m. with Elie Top every night.

  LOULOU If you’ve worked for Yves Saint Laurent, it’s very difficult to work for another house. Plus, I don’t think anybody would have wanted me. It would be practically like hiring him: the eye one’s got; the way we look at things.

  ALLEY WILLRON “Loulou de La Falaise to Open Paris House,” Women’s Wear Daily, September 6, 2002 PARIS—Dressed Thursday in an army jacket tossed nonchalantly over an orange silk blouse and black trousers, Loulou de La Fa-laise has always had a knack for mixing the basic with the unexpected—to surprising effect. It’s a formula she intends to apply to her new venture: a Loulou de La Falaise fashion house slated to open at 7, rue de Bourgogne here early next year. In an interview in the salon on avenue Marceau where Yves Saint Laurent held his historic farewell press conference, de La Falaise unveiled her plans for a signature line of clothing and accessories.

  “It’s obviously luxury. But ideally, I’d also like to have items that are very affordable …,” she said. “My aim is not to make fashion. I’m not going to have fashion shows. I just want to make desirable things. I want things to be well-made, original and with a touch of fantasy… It’s very difficult to do very tiny quantities,” she said.

  De La Falaise was also reluctant to discuss the financing of the venture, although she admitted she has partners. It is believed Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé and Éric de Rothschild are among the investors … De la Falaise said she was encouraged on all fronts, including loyal Saint Laurent clients, to start her own label. “Everybody pushed me into it. They said, ‘We are expecting it. We want you to do it.’ ” … She noted she also plans to take on other design consulting contracts for fine jewelry or home furnishings.

  FRANÇOISE PICOLI When Saint Laurent retired, Loulou was in a bad state. Very depressed. I wrote her saying she should be the Line Vautrin132 of her day, designing one-of-a-kind jewelry. Tiny boutique, one salesperson, low overhead. Her suppliers were already in place. I’m sure it would have worked. She thanked me, saying my letter had done her good, but she didn’t jump at the idea. “Yes, but …” That’s when I realized she wanted to avenge Yves Saint Laurent and prove she could design clothes.

  GRACE CODDINGTON It always happens: The number two gets frustrated. Zack Carr133 was so much a part of Calvin Klein, he thought he could make it on his own. Sadly, he failed.

  LOULOU I’m not very good at idleness, and when Yves announced his retirement, my daughter said to me, “You’re certainly not going to spend your days planting flowers.” Of course she was right, and there was no question that I would not continue to work—I was not of retiring age. I’d already made a plan to do a high-fashion boutique, having been approached by an eager investor. But in the end it didn’t work out, and I decided to continue with the project under my own steam. I called my close friend Ariel de Ravenel and asked her if she would be willing to take care of the business side of things … [Yves] is very much the godfather.

  SUSAN GUTFREUND Wouldn’t you feel empowered at that point in your life if you were Loulou? You’ve done it all, the creative juices are flo
wing, you’ve spent all those years keeping crazy hours, up till three the night before the collection, then on to resort, then on to handbags, then on to jewelry—then suddenly you’re not needed anymore?

  JüRGEN DOERING What else was she going to do, work for Anna Wintour? Loulou’s feeling was, I want my own house, I’ve got the cash and I’m going to do it. At Saint Laurent, she’d talked about a new-old way of doing a couture house, with branches in New York, London … It was how Dior had done it, a design studio in each city producing its own collection: luxe ré gional à l’ancienne. A stance against globalization and mass production. Her dream was to do worldwide what she did in Paris.

  ANDRÉLEON TALLEY Loulou didn’t have any great goals. She started the company to put food on the table. She and Maxime are of the falaise, of the roche, the rock. They worked all their lives. These women had inner gene banks that allowed them to survive in situations where normal human beings could not.

  COLOMBE PRINGLE At Saint Laurent, everything was done for you. Then suddenly Loulou was on her own. It was like she’d inherited a castle and de-

  cided to farm the land. But she didn’t think, I’m going to hire two farmers and have this many horses. Her mind didn’t work that way. It’s what we liked about her. She didn’t hire a CEO. If she had, it wouldn’t have been Loulou.

  MICHEL KLEIN For Loulou, fashion was an enjoyment, not a business—even after so many years. She was like a child who’d had twenty-five nannies and now had to cross the street alone.

  NICOLE DORIER She must’ve thought she was invincible. A year before, Saint Laurent was still giving interviews calling her his backbone.

  MARC BERI I was the architect who got the shop in shape, and Alexis designed the fixtures. He’d already been diagnosed with lung cancer—he was a big smoker. Loulou decided the look of the boutique. It had a diaphanous, little-girl quality. I’d worked for Ricardo Bofill in 1976, but only knew Annabelle d’Huart. Then while doing the boutique someone said that Loulou had been very in love, painfully so, with the person she’d been with before Thadée: Ricardo. All these years I had no idea.

  ALLEY WILLRON “Loulou’s Chinese Takeout: Longtime Yves Saint Laurent Muse Set to Open Her Signature Fashion Boutique Today in Paris,” Women’s Wear Daily, February 14, 2003 PARIS—Where to put the Chinese lanterns? Those were among the dozens of questions Loulou de La Falaise juggled Thursday afternoon as dozens of workers scurried to ready her signature fashion boutique for its grand opening today.

  To be sure, chinoiserie figures prominently as a theme—with a dash of Egypt and a soupç on of Africa—in the 1,600-square-foot shop decorated in an eclectic, colorful style… There is a lot for the eye to absorb: Antique Chinese cabinets and modern accessory cases in glass and red lacquer stand against walls painted robin’s egg blue and mustard—with a band of burgundy in between. A staircase painted mint green and carpeted in red winds its way up to a loungy area with floral chiffon curtains billowing onto the floor and a burgundy sofa decorated with brocade pillows depicting camels and other exotica. “It’s rather full of fantasy, the whole thing,” de La Falaise allowed, surveying the store from her perch on a red stool printed with gold butterflies… Prices range from $190 for horn and gold-leaf bangles, to $1,060 for satin jacquard trousers, to $4,300 for a three-piece mannish pantsuit. De La Falaise … said [the shop] is self-financed. Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé, Catherine Deneuve and Hedi Slimane are among the glitterati expected tonight at a cocktail to toast the worldwide debut.

  JACQUES GRANGE Pierre said to Loulou from the start, “If you want, we can do the company together,” no? And she said, “No, no, I want to be independent.” She refused. That’s what I understood.

  FRANÇOISE PICOLI Bergé didn’t believe in the venture, apparently, which was hard for Loulou to take.

  MIN HOGG Pierre didn’t put up the money? How mean of him. It’s the least he could have done, isn’t it?

  DIANE VON FURSTENBERG Yves and Pierre should have—Loulou financed her company herself in despair. We all go through these things. It doesn’t matter. Loulou loved Yves so much, and he loved her, too, but it all turned a little sour.

  AUDREY SECNAZI Loulou wanted to fly with her own wings. She felt sufficiently armed with Ariel de Ravenel, who found her Patricia Bellac, who helped set up the company and negotiated the €300,000 “enveloppe” with M. Bergé. It was that money, plus her severance, plus whatever she and Thadée had in the bank that Loulou used to start the business. But what can you do with €300,000? What I still don’t understand is why M. Bergé didn’t have the dé licatesse to do for Loulou what he did for Merloz.

  PAQUITA PAQUIN Certainly Bergé feared that Loulou would be perceived

  as Yves’s successor. Her idea was to recoup his old couture clients, like São

  Schlumberger and Micheline Maus.

  JANE PENDRY Loulou pictured as her customer base the still-loyal Saint Laurent woman who wasn’t being satisfied by Tom Ford.

  HUBERT DE GIVENCHY I sent Loulou a lot of clients. They were happy she was opening: “Saint Laurent has retired, but now we’ve got Loulou!” They raced to the shop.

  ALLEN ROSENBAUM I was passing Bergdorf’s, and to my amazement there’s a trunk show for Loulou de La Falaise, she’s going to appear. I started to go in, and then I thought, I’m not going to take the chance, given our history, of being cut. Ignored. Which was stupid. I can’t believe she would have been quite so brittle. Maybe out of sheer nostalgia … I saw photographs. She’d developed a bit of a drag-queen quality. Hardened.

  YUTA POWELL I’d owned the Givenchy and Carolina Herrera franchises in New York. I worked more on Carolina’s collection than she did, but M. de Givenchy was my mentor. I was looking for a new designer to do a mono-brand boutique with to replace Carolina, and he sent me to Loulou. Her first collection was “Wow, oh my God”—it was that good. I barely had it in the shop before it sold. The clothes were truly demicouture for the street—you didn’t need a grand occasion to wear them. Exquisite buttons and passementerie, baroque elements and mandarin collars that evoked Saint Laurent, a raw silk pinstripe in the same color as the leather jacket it lined—for the customer who appreciated details, it was a dream. The quality was superb. It irked Loulou that people confused her with Inès de La Fressange, but she had a sense of humor about it. In any case, comparing Loulou to Inès as designers is like comparing Bergdorf’s to Bloomingdale’s.

  LOULOU Anything can inspire me, whether it’s a journey or a crack in a wall … Creativity is like a little muscle you have to maintain. I read an interview with John Galliano and I agree with him: A chewing-gum wrapper in the gutter can be inspiring … I’m half-English, and when I was at Saint Laurent this side of me was suppressed. The minute I started my collection, my English side came to the surface … I make all the prototypes for my jewelry at my workbench in the studio above the shop … I’m very independent. I don’t like the idea of belonging to someone else. I’m a flea. What’s worse, I’m a flea who annoys, because I’m doing this without a group behind me and it’s a success! … Before, mannequins and designers weren’t so rich, there wasn’t so much at stake. Today you have to make like you’re rich, otherwise no one believes in you.

  SUSAN GUTFREUND I was mad for Loulou’s style. Remember how Saint Laurent used to do Bavarian jackets? She did them, too, in bottle green linen or wool, purple for the lining and lapels, horn buttons, paired with a dirndly Austrian skirt.

  HAMISH BOWLES The shop struck one as an almost spontaneous outlet for Loulou’s self-expression, with a charm that seemed deliberately unpolished.

  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE LAIZEAU Loulou offered demi-mesure, and for clients like Nan Kempner, full couture—Mrs. Kempner had her own pattern on file. I headed Loulou’s press office, and as at Saint Laurent in the old days, her collections were shown in-house, mini old-school defilé s, editors perched on gold ballroom chairs. M. Saint Laurent always attended, with Moujik, of course.

  LOUISE KAHRMANN I’d had a real jo
b at British Vogue, and though I felt interning for Loulou wasn’t really what I should be doing, I also felt it’d be like getting a degree in fashion history. The most important thing to her was that I have pretty penmanship. She wanted to know that the show invitations would be beautifully written. We had a Philippine butler who wore a white jacket

  with gold buttons, which I thought was so chic, making us tea, serving us champagne—there was a rule that the fridge had to be stocked with Boizel pink champagne. It would come out at any time—nine in the morning, at lunch. It was always champagne o’clock. If there was a dinner at Loulou’s apartment and she ran out, she’d hand me some cash and send me to the all-night grocery store across the road. The first time, I asked, “Which brand? What color?” “Just say it’s for Loulou and she wants her favorite.”

  Once, we had an event at a store in a dodgy part of London. Okay, I thought, it’s a huge privilege that Loulou’s here, the owner’s going to take us somewhere fabulous for lunch, like Claridge’s. Instead, she led us to the pub around the corner. “Don’t worry,” I told Loulou, “I’ll take care of this.” “No, no, no,” she said, “the pub sounds wonderful.” She had fish and chips and a beer. She didn’t look down on anyone. She could find something in common with a bricklayer.

  Loulou treated me differently. I was the only person in the house she tutoyait. She was a mentor. If she didn’t approve of something I wore, she’d look me up and down silently, and I’d never wear it again. Eventually, I was put on salary and allowed a certain amount from each collection, Loulou guiding my choices. Sometimes I felt she wanted to make me into her.

  Everyone she employed had been with her when she worked for M. Saint Laurent. He’d pass by sometimes, unannounced, and if there was a cocktail party, we might see M. Bergé. Everybody was petrified of him. He remembered Loulou’s birthday every year with a bouquet of roses, conspicuously large, sent from Henri Moulie’s. Someone remarked on his kindness. “Kindness has nothing to do with it,” Loulou deadpanned. “He’s just apologizing for his bad behavior.”