REMEMBERING LOULOU DE LA FALAISE
Louise Vava Lucia Henriette Le Bailly de La Falaise AKA “Loulou”, passed away this weekend in Paris.
Long before Kate Moss and Chloe Sevigny, there was Loulou de La Falaise.
Born in 1948 as the eldest child to Maxime Birley (model and muse to fashion designer Elsa Schiapperelli) and the French aristocrat Count Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise. Reportedly Photographer Cecile Beaton called Maxime Birley "the only truly chic Englishwoman." La Falaise would carry on to uphold the family tradition of inspiring designers and artists around the world.
After a brief marriage to an Irish count, La Falaise moved to New York in 1970. Prolific editor of Harper's Bazaar, Diana Vreeland organized an 8 page spread on Loulou's personal style photographed by Richard Avedon.
“Life has its stages and époques,” Loulou told Georgina Howell in 1992. “I seem to have hit places at the right moment, when they needed new blood. There was London in the sixties—Ossie Clark, Mick Jagger—and then there was New York: Tanguy and the first Metropolitan opening of the Warhol show . . . Andy and Marisol turning up in jeans all splattered with paint. The Halston girls . . . all of us foreigners, all equally at home in three cities.”
Amidst her bohemian life in New York and designing prints for the American label Halston, Loulou met iconic French designer Yves Saint Laurent. She moved to Paris and began a creative relationship that would span over thirty years, as his muse and accessory designer.
“It is fantastic to work beside Yves,” Loulou told Vogue after 20 years of collaboration, “We both believe fantasy is such a vital element of fashion. We tend to think of ourselves as gypsies who have just returned with a marvelous caravan of incredible finds from the exotic reaches of the earth. But we have to make the caravan ourselves. Our Orient is our imagination.”
“It’s not only what she does, it’s what she inspires,” noted Saint Laurent’s partner Pierre Bergé of the Yves–Loulou working dynamic. “She’s always dressed with a certain spirit of fantasy . . . she’s full of life, rebellious, and she shares his sense of humour.”
In 2002, La Falaise launched her own fashion business, designing ready-to-wear, costume-jewellry, and accessories, which retailed in the U.S. as well as two Loulou de La Falaise shops in Paris.
1977 at her wedding to Thadée Klossowski de Rola, son of the artist Balthus.
