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Loulou & Yves : the untold story of Loulou de la Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent / Christopher Petkanas.

by Petkanas, Christopher.

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St. Martin's Press, 2018.

746.92092 P491L

La Falaise, Loulou de.

Saint Laurent, Yves.

Fashion designers -- France -- Biography.

Costume design -- France -- History -- 20th century.

Fashion -- France -- History -- 20th century.

9781250051691 (hc.)

Alternate title:

Loulou and Yves : the untold story of Loulou de la Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent

xvi, 495 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sir Oswald and Lady Birley -- A tribe called Falaise -- Rogue countess -- Les miserables -- A precocious itinerary : East Sussex to Gstaad, New York to Provence -- The Knight of Glin -- She's married to a fairy, so what's her problem? -- Donald Cammell, sex addict -- Hippie De Luxe Londonienne -- The years between, 1968-1972 -- Loulou & Yves -- Anne-Marie Munoz, Mater Dolorosa -- Thadee or Ricardo? -- Glue-gunning ahead of the curve -- Stop press -- Wedding of the decade -- La vie en couple -- Bijoux de fantaisie -- Les clans -- Muse? -- The Fiat guy -- Les girls Saint Laurent -- Lady Libertine -- Slogging through the '90s -- Ain't Laurent without Yves -- Loulou, Inc. -- Final stretch -- In extremis -- The second death of Saint Laurent -- Afterlife.

Dauntless, "in the bone" style made Loulou de La Falaise one of the great fashion firebrands of the twentieth century. Descending in a direct line from Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, she was celebrated at her death in 2011, aged just sixty-four, as the one person Yves Saint Laurent could not live without. Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) was the most influential designer of his times; possibly also the most neurasthenic. In an exquisitely intimate, sometimes painful personal and professional relationship, Loulou de La Falaise was his creative right hand, muse, alter ego and the virtuoso behind all the devastatingly flamboyant accessories that were a crucial component of the YSL "look." For thirty years, until his retirement in 2002, Yves relied on Loulou to inspire him with the tilt of her hat, make him laugh and talk him off the ledge - the enchanted formula that brought him from one historic collection to the next. Yves's many tributes shape Loulou's memory, as if everything there was to know about this fugitive, Giacometti-like figure could be told by her clanking bronze cuffs, towering fur toques, the turquoise boulders on her fingers and her working friendship with the man who put women in pants. But parallel to this storyline runs another, darker one, exposing the underbelly of fashion at its highest level. Behind Yves's encomiums are a pair of aristocrat parents - Loulou's shiftless French father and menacingly chic English mother - who abandoned her to a childhood of foster care and sexual abuse straight out of "Les Misérables"; Loulou's recurring desperation to leave Yves and go out on her own; and the grandiose myths surrounding her family. Loulou felt that her life had been kidnapped by the operatic workings of the House of Saint Laurent, and in her last years danced with financial ruin. An elusive fashion idol - nymphomaniacal, heedless and up to her bracelets in coke and Boizel champagne - at the core of what used to be called "le beau monde." The spoken memories of more than two hundred "voices" - husbands, lovers, extended family, friends, enemies, slightly less bitter detractors, colleagues, groupies, pundits, and hangers-on - are seamlessly interwoven with those of Yves and Loulou themselves.

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