Friend and muse to the legendary Yves Saint Laurent, known inspiration for the notorious Le Smoking collection, and lifelong collaborator, LouLou de la Falaise remains a style icon till this day.
Born to Maxime de la Falaise, a model for Elsa Schiaparelli and supposed food maven and cookbook author, LouLou was arguably born into fashion royalty.
Consider Loulou the rare type of nonconformist that outlasted fashion itself. She began her friendship with YSL in the 1970s and remains well-known in circle expanding far beyond style till this day. Sadly, she died in 2011 at the age of 64.
LouLou de Falaise was such an style icon because of the way she dresses and what she embodied — not just simply what she wore. For LouLou didn’t wear clothes, she created a performance and barrage of characters out of them.
“Upbeat, savvy, beautiful and boyishly slim, she looked like a Saint Laurent fashion sketch. How she put herself together was even more remarkable: When she arrived at about 9 a.m. every day to the YSL couture studios on Paris’s Right Bank, it was an event. The pants, jackets, skirts, blouses, dresses, stockings, shoes, shawls, bags and jewelry that she assembled and donned each morning in her 14th Arrondissement apartment were unlike anything anyone else in Paris wore, or had ever seen.
Heiresses, countesses, models, movie stars and scores of fashion editors wanted to look like Loulou. Whether she was channeling an 18th-century Indian princess, a pre-Soviet Russian peasant or a 20th-century East Village flower child, her getups went beyond costume. They looked fresh, contemporary. She didn’t dress up to wow the paparazzi (although she was photographed countless times), but rather to delight herself, surprise her friends and, most crucially, impress Yves.”
– The New York Times
Thinking on it today, there just aren’t that many people, celebrities or those walking around in our everyday life, who hold such a remarkable fashion personality. Perhaps it’s because of the fact we’ve started dressing so much more casually as a society, or maybe it’s due to the rise of brands going in a more conservative direction with logos and brand DNA.
With every outfit she wore, there was a sense of grandeur and embellishment.
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