Loulou de la Falaise

the back, Maxime de La Falaise, when working as a model for Schiaparelli in imagination. Loulou spent her the back, Loulou de La Falaise, when working as a imagination. C I- DE SSO US â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

C I - DE SSO US â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

the back, Maxime de La Falaise, when working as a model for Schiaparelli in imagination. Loulou spent her

C I - DE SSO US — the back, Maxime de La Falaise, when working as a model for Schiaparelli in imagination. Loulou spent her teenage years in London, which was a bohemian period for her., C I - CO N TR E — the back, Loulou de La Falaise, when working as a imagination.

the back, Maxime de La Falaise, when working as a model for Schiaparelli in imagination. Loulou spent her teenage years in London, which was a bohemian period for her., C I -CO N TR E — the back, Loulou de La Falaise, when working as a imagination. C I -DE SSO US —

the back, Maxime de La Falaise, when working as a model for Schiaparelli in imagination. Loulou spent her teenage years in London, which was a bohemian period for her., C I - DE SSO US â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

the back, Maxime de La Falaise, when working as a model for Schiaparelli in imagination. Loulou spent her teenage years in London, which was a bohemian period for her., C I- CO N TR E — the back, Loulou de La Falaise, when working as a imagination. C I- DE SSO US —

C I- D E SSO US —

the back, Maxime de La Falaise, when working as Charleston mano

Noted regulars of the Palace nightclub—Paris’s Studio 54—their friends were a mixture of the erudite, the chic, and the sophisticated: the publisher Leonello Brandolini, the model Wallis Franken, the inventor Jacques de Gunzburg, the designer Michel Klein, the fashion editor André Leon Talley, the photographer Bettina Rheims and her journalist husband Serge Bramly, the banker Eric de Rothschild, and Nicole Wisniak, Egoïste’s founder and editor. “It was Loulou’s intelligence which was so remarkable,” says Wisniak. Loulou’s determination to make “people be happy” rarely ceased to astonish Brandolini. “I have never seen anyone as generous,” he says. “In fact, the two things that defined Loulou were her generosity and her courage.” He also admired her mental elegance. “She thought some things were petty and they were not worth paying attention to.” Most Saturdays, Loulou and Thadée would entertain at their home on the rue des Plantes. Many of their guests recall the vast 18th century chandelier hanging in the salon, a wedding present from Saint Laurent. (It lay in its box until being hooked up by a pale man whom Loulou described as being “fish-like with a massive, rounded back that rolled into his neck,” either revealing or omitting the fact that he was the boyfriend of a popular cocaine dealer, depending on who she was talking to.) “The decor of that apartment was the chic of the poor with the highest, poetic moments,” says André Leon Talley. “That Louis XV chandelier, the apple green sleigh bed, the batiks and Irish linen cloths.” The decor was pepped up by her imaginative bouquets. “Loulou treated flowers in the same free way that she dressed: very quick and all at once,” says Beatrice de Rothschild. The soirées were cosy and fun. “Loulou was the perfect hostess by never being pretentious or grand,” Manolo Blahnik recalls. “There was always a dinner for someone from out of town which led to the best parties,” says de Rothschild. Guests of honour ranged from the writer Bruce Chatwin to the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe to Andy Warhol’s business partner, Fred Hughes. “It was a carefree period, before AIDS,” says Bettina Rheims. “Apart from Loulou, most of us were broke and starting out.” Little attention was paid to food, and, “we drank more than we ate.” As the night progressed, all the women would disappear into Loulou’s closet. “It resembled Ali Baba’s cave and Loulou would dress us up like dolls,” she says. The goal was to hit the night scene, afterwards. “But most of the time, we took too long, ended up staying in and that was the fun.” Regarding Loulou’s relationship with her male friends “both straight and gay,” Bella Freud, the designer and daughter of the artist Lucian Freud, compares her to Titania, the Fairy Queen in Midsummer’s Night Dream. “They looked to Loulou to lead the way and she set the pace and theme,” she says. “There was nothing that she wouldn’t do herself yet she had a sense of the rules of the game.” © 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

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