Weekend Reading 19: Loulou de la Falaise

Loulou de la Falaise's death was announced today by the Pierre Bergé Yves Saint Laurent Fondation.

"My home is like a gypsy as it has a lot of color and generosity.  I want to make people feel happy and surprised but at the same time it has to be beautiful."  Loulou de la Falaise

Loulou de la Falaise's apartment in Paris

In 2007 Falaise created a line of jewelry and objects for the home called 'Loulou de la Falaise Fantasie'.  "Each piece is a fantasy - but things shouldn't be serious, but fun and enhancing," said Falaise.

Loulou de la Falaise, Yves Saint Laurent and Bianca Jagger all looking so happy.

"Anything I've ever had a really good time in, I would never give away."

Loulou de la Falaise modeling for Vogue

"When I shop, I try things on and then look at the label."

Falaise's bangles

'Loulou de la Falaise's preferred beauty tonic comes in a bottle of Scotch.'  From Francesco Scavullo's 1976 book, 'Scavullo on Beauty'.

Loulou de la Falaise in Yves Saint Laurent on her wedding day to Thadée Klossowski in 1977 with her mother, Maxime de la Falaise.  Doesn't the mother of the bride, Maxime, look glamorous in her white dress with gold jewelry, red beads and red nails?!

'As a designer as well as a small business owner, Loulou del la Falaise has finally abandoned the last vestiges of her fabled role as Yves Saint Laurent's muse.  "I'm looking for one myself" she said.  The New York Times

Loulou de la Falaise, our RARE vintage Muse Forever.  Creative and Createur.  

Weekend Reading 18: Style and Design Icon: Elsa Peretti

Weekend reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

'She is a woman of almost awesome chic.  Looking as dazzling in a beat up men's fedora as she does in a ball gown." From the book, The Fashion Makers.

Photo by Jill Krementz

Read more by clicking on link below:

Weekend Reading 17: Dear Charles... Millicent Rogers and Charles James A Love Story of Sorts

Weekend reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

Dear Charles,

In answer to your various letters, I do think yours suddenly is a queer way of acting.  A while back when you needed money in Europe I sent it to you in exchange for a suit the whole of which I finally got a year later. 

Millicent 

Dearest, dearest Millicent,

In this, I have entirely forgotten or struck out of mind all the dealings which went to make up the total of of 6,000 in Bill A.   I have simply arranged a gift to the Museum for the sum of 6,000, which is entirely payable out of your untaxed income  and should NOT cost you more then 1,000, and therefore saves you between four and five grand." 

Charles

Weekend Reading 16: "Burying your silver between two trees": Vogue Paris 1945

When war was declared on September 3, 1939 I was in bed in my Paris flat with an uncomfortable and unbecoming head cold.  Bettina Ballard

Weekend Reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

I went to the police station to get gas masks for Marcelle and me.  When Marcelle turned my bed down and laid out my night clothes, she put my gas mask on a chair with a pair of slacks, a sweater, tennis shoes and a flash light.  This was her idea of the proper garb for a Vogue editor to wear in an air raid shelter. 

Edna Chase (Editor in chief of Vogue) immediately sent cables, "How are couturiers coping with the new war conditions?"or "send a story on what smart women are wearing in air-raid shelters, doing war work, etc...".

A few of the courturiers had closed; Mainbocher had closed completely and left for America, Chanel had closed (not to reopen until 1954) and Paquin closed temporarily.  Schiaparelli was inspired to design town bicycling costumes: jackets with big pouch pockets to use instead of a handbag, wraparound skirts with bloomers underneath them, fedora hats - all of which I dutifully reported to New York.

We sketched women dining at Maxim's in chic, black unexaggerated fashions with skirts to mid length, hats tilted over one eye.  I reported that eccentricities were nowhere to be seen, frivolous hats had completely disappeared, although after a few hatless weeks, Madame Suzy rushed back to Paris to see that there was no nonsense as Parisians thinking they could go around without hats.  She quickly devised a cut-velvet snoodlike beret, which, to squat forceful Suzy, had exactly the right percentage of chic and practicality for war.

Bettina Ballard left Paris and did not return until the winter of 1945.

Letters and cables came.  Everyone was evacuating.  Louie Macy was on her way home with Gogo Schiaparelli (Elsa Schiaparelli's daughter) in tow.  Michel de Brunhoff (Editor of French Vogue) had evacuated with his family, his relatives and his office files to a big house outside of Bordeaux.  Elsie Mendl with her husband, Sir Charles, headed for Biarritz in her Rolls-Royce.  Tommy Kernan, the manager of the Vogue office, sent me one last cable from Paris before he left,  "Burying your silver between two trees in the forest of Yvelines."

The last issue of French Vogue published during the war was in 1939.  

In 1945, with great difficulty, Michel de Brunhoff, managed to publish the first issue of French Vogue.

Michel de Brunhoff and the remains of the Vogue staff were camping out at the offices of Jardin des Modes, which had continued publication on a small scale during the war.  Little light came in from the dark street, and there were no lights in the office.  The cold air was thick with the odor of nervously cold bodies in old woolens.  I walked through to De Brunhoffs office with a sinking heart - I felt that I was in the antechamber of despair.

Michel looked up startled to say, " C'est vrai? C'est ma Bettina?"  He had aged twenty years in the four and a half years I had not seen him.  His only son, he told me, at seventeen had been hunted down on a farm by the Getsapo and shot, along with several other boys, on the suspicion that they were part of the resistance.

A NOS LECTRICES

Apres quatres ans de silence forcé, nous sommes heureux de pouvoir, malgré les nombreuses fifficultés techniques et mat´rielles que nous avons recontrés, présenter un numéro qui, nous l'espérons, sera jugé par les amis de "Vogue" digne du passé de notre magazine, et des couturiers et des artistes qui y ont collaboré.

Ce n'est pas, hélas!  le premier numero d'une parution mensuelle, normalle et réguliere.  Les conditions économiques ne le permettant pas encore.  C'est un numéro hors-série "Vogue Libération".  Michel de Brunhoff

Vogue Liberation.  January 1945.

All images from Vogue.  

Text from Bettina Ballard's wonderful book, In My Fashion.

"Is it?? It Was." Weekend Reading 15: Rosamond Bernier

Updated:  Mrs. Bernier has just told me that she wore the 1970s Halston when she lectured at the Grand Palais and wore it numerous times afterwards when she lectured at the Met.  You see, you can have your fashion and wear it more then once!

What to wear when you are 91 and giving a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: a flowing tie-dyed Halston - if you are the ever so fabulous and ever so glamorous, Rosamond Bernier that is.  

Weekend reading for you from RARE vintage about the exceptional and fascinating life of Rosamond Bernier. Read on...


Mrs. Bernier lectured for over thirty years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other places  about her friendships with artists like Picasso, Matisse and Miro.  She gave her final lecture in March of 2008 and this last time she spoke about her life in couture.

"If I hadn't given some of my Balenciaga evening gowns to the Costume Institute, I would wear them right now."   And Mrs. Bernier mean what she says.  On her website, rosamondbernier.com, there is a photograph of her wearing a Zandra Rhodes in 1972 and she writes that she still wears it now.

Rosamond Bernier in Zandra Rhodes lecturing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972.  

Photograph  from rosamondbernier.com

"I had the excitement of ordering my first couture dress from that first Balenciaga collection in February 1946.  I was to wear it for special occasion for years.   Not long ago I wore it for dinner at the house of a master American couture, Oscar de la Renta.  My host gasped when I entered.  "Is it??" he asked with excitement.  It was."

1946 Balenciaga evening gown in the collection of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

Gift of Rosamond Bernier.

L'Oeil of Rosamond Bernier

In 1955 Rosamond Bernier and her then husband, Georges Bernier, founded the magazine L'Oeil.  An early coup for the magazine was a tip that there was an undiscovered collection of Picasso paintings in Barcelona.

'Telephoning for an appointment at the Barcelona apartment, editor Bernier got a surprising answer:"  Come at 11 tonight."  Once inside, she found herself plunged into the world of a gypsy encampment.  "The lights burn out all the time here," Picasso's niece Lolita explained.  In the semidarkness, Rosamond Bernier saw a room cluttered with ancient furniture, presided over by Picasso's smiling sister, Dona Lola, wrapped in a sheet held together with safety pins.  "Mama suffers from rheumatism and can't sleep.  None of us ever goes to bed before 6." the family explained and then plunged into the evening's entertainment.  Dona Lola's nephew began plucking out a lively flamenco on his guitar.  Lolita sat down at the piano.  In no time Juanin began a heel stomping dance; Doctor Jaime handed around glasses of sweet Malaga wine while keeping time with a multicolored duster (a present from Uncle Pablo).  Dona Lola swayed happily to the rhythm, urging the dancers on with shouts of "Ole!".  (All sounds very Grey Gardens-ish doesn't it?!  Only this was in Barcelona in 1955!)

A first edition of The Selective Eye (an anthology of the first nine issues of L'Oeil) from the library of Truman Capote.  Available at Bauman Rare Books.

The fashionable eye of Rosamond Bernier.  Pieces from her collection that are now a part of the Costume Institute's collection:

1949 Christian Dior gown (which also was the featured piece on the cover for the catalog of the Dior show at the Met.)

1972 Zandra Rhodes

1966 Yves Saint Laurent ensemble.

1968 Madame Gres silk gown.

1962 Balenciaga silk cocktail dress.  

Now does the dress above look familiar to anyone?

A similar 1962 Balencaiga from RARE vintage:)

In October Some of my Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir by Rosamond Bernier will be published.  You can pre-order it as I did on Amazon.com.  And FYI Mrs. Bernier will be signing books at the Met on Wednesday, November 2nd at 4PM.  See you there!

Some text excerpted from Time magazine and a NY Times video from Rosamond Bernier's final lecture at the Met which can be seen in full here.

Weekend Reading 14: In My Secret Garden There is a Rabbit Wearing a Ruff and a Dinosaur Spouting Water

Weekend reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

In my head there are many rooms.

Tete-Maison, 1973

Within those rooms there is a meadow dotted with sheep

Moutons on the grounds of the Chateau de Chenonceau, 1991

Weekend Reading 13: 'I Feel Sorry for Near-Beauties with Small Noses' La Comtesse: Jacqueline de Ribes

Part Two in our series on Jacqueline de Ribes.  Weekend Reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

"I feel sorry for near-beauties with small noses" said Avedon after taking Jacqueline de Ribes' photograph in the 1950s.  Avedon photographed Jacqueline at the behest of Diana Vreeland who was then editor of Harper's Bazaar.  She had seen Jacqueline at lunch the day before dining with Charles de Beistequi.  Her curiosity was piqued by his sphinx-like companion.  Diana said, 'We'd like Avedon to take your photo tomorrow.'  The next day Jacqueline went to the hair dressers, curled her hair and got false eyelashes.  But when she showed up, Diana said, 'I want you to be like you were yesterday!  She peeled off the eyelashes and combed out her hair.  And she made her a braid.  The picture became famous.  

Photograph by Richard Avedon

Avedon’s iconic cameo-like profile portrait of Jacqueline, with the impossibly long neck, exaggerated almond eyes, and improbably thick braid, was eventually published in Life and in the photographer’s anthology Observations, with text by Truman Capote, in which he famously compared Jacqueline, Babe Paley, Marella Agnelli, and Gloria Vanderbilt to “a gathering of swans.”

Jacqueline says, "Between 1950 and 1955, I figured out my style.  It had to do with eye make up.  Everyone said I looked like Nefertiti - I don't, but that's how I got the idea."

On a trip to New York in 1955, during which time she attended the Knickerbocker Ball (in a Dessès gown), she caught the attention of Oleg Cassini, who found her “elegant to the point of distraction.” Recalls Jacqueline, “Oleg said, ‘I feel you are a frustrated designer. Would you do things for me?’ I came back to Paris, to the attic of my house, and cut dress patterns on the floor. To help me out, I booked the première [head of studio] from Patou, and a worker from Balenciaga. I made the dresses only in toiles [muslins], as I couldn’t afford silk. Then I packed the toiles in boxes to send to Oleg in New York. But first I needed to glue onto each box a nice croquis [fashion sketch] of the contents inside. I couldn’t draw, so Jean Dessès proposed I hire a young Italian in his studio. It was Valentino! He came to my house once or twice a week for about a year. He drew my croquis, but always wanted to add an extra bow, frill, or flower. Valentino would complain—‘I have no money. I live in an attic, with a toilet on the other end. (It is very difficult to imagine Valentino in an attic hovel with no bathroom) I am going back to Rome.’ I told him he could not leave. To be a couturier, I advised him, he had to stay in Paris. Besides, I did not want to lose my dessinateur! Three years later, Valentino opened his own couture house. I was green with jealousy. In the meantime I had closed my attic. So I went to Rome and bought clothes from him.”

Jacqueline de Ribes was voted onto the best dressed list in 1956 and in 1962 ascended to the Hall of Fame.  "When everyone still cared about how they dressed," says her friend Jayne Wrightsman, "everyone wanted to dress like her and look like her."

Photograph by Victor Skrebneski

Says Countess Marina Cicogna, "She personified the international idea that French women were the most elegant in the world." 

Princess Alexander Romanov said, "I loved to watch her do anything.  To water-ski.  To take off a glove.  She was beyond sex.  She was something not of this world."

Jacqueline's father-in-law described his renegade relation as a "cross between a Russian Princess and a girl of the Folies Bergere".  Says Carolina Herrera, "She made many parties famous just for walking in and out of them.  The topic of conversation the next day was always what Jacqueline wore.

Jacqueline de Ribes in a headpiece that had belonged to Sarah Bernhardt.

To be continued...

Text from The Last Queen of Paris.  Amy Fine Collins.

Weekend Reading 11: Her Hair was Paler than Dom Pérignon: C.Z. Guest

As Raymond Chandler remarked of his femme fatale in The Long Goodbye: "There are blondes, and then there are blondes." Truman Capote on C.Z. Guest

C.Z. Guest photographed by Cecil Beaton.  1953

Weekend Reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

I first saw C.Z. Guest when she was giving a talk on Long Island's Gold Coast about gardening.  You know, it is funny, but I can't remember what she was wearing.  It was what she was saying that was so interesting.  She said that her favorite garden was Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.  She had just published her third book, Garden Talk: Ask me anything.  And it did seem you could quite literally ask her anything and she knew the answer.  She published her first book, First Garden, in 1976. The illustrations were by Cecil Beaton and the introduction was by Truman Capote.  All too fabulous don't you think?!

C.Z. Guest by Cecil Beaton 

'The first time I saw Mrs. Guest was during an entr'acte on the opening night of MY Fair Lady.  Mrs. Guest was shimmering in the blue smoky light (people probably smoked during the performance too back then!).  Her hair, parted in the middle and paler then Dom Pérignon, was but a shade darker then the dress she was wearing, a Main Bocher column of white crepe de chine.  No jewelry, not much make up; just blanc de blanc perfection.'   Truman Capote.

A classic photo of C.Z. Guest in Mainbocher in her apartment on Sutton Place.

'TIME magazine published an extensive article on the upper-plateaus of American "aristocracy"; and Mrs. Guest appeared on the cover in a very formal riding habit.  Cold.  Soignée.  The Ice-Cream Lady.  Maybe so.  At horse shows. Or riding to the hounds somewhere in Virginia.  But usually observed galloping across the countryside, she is wearing cowboy chaps and a man's shirt with rolled up sleeves.'  Truman Capote

The second time I saw C.Z. Guest was by chance at Bergdorf Goodman.  She was there promoting her candles made by Slatkin.  I remember the packaging was wonderful and, of course, very chic.  The candle was poured into a cream ceramic pot with a wax C.Z. seal and when the candle was gone, there were little seeds to plant in the pot.  She also did a bug spray.  "Bugs love me," she said.  "This way they can die a happy death".  (Not sure if bugs really thought, if I had to go, at least it was by the ever so chic C.Z. Guest bug spray... but you know...)

The third and last time I saw C.Z. Guest was at Met Gala for the Costume Institute in 2003.  She was wearing a cream and gold Oscar de la Renta gown.  She had that shimmering look Truman Capote had written about.  It was her voice on the audio tour for the exhibit, 'Goddess'.  "I began, Hello this is C.Z. Guest".

Hamish Bowles wrote one of my all time favorite stories on C.Z. Guest in the 2002 Age Issue of Vogue.  Which, by the way is one of THE best issues of Vogue ever and a must have.

C.Z. Guest photographed by Cecil Beaton for Vogue 

in vintage Mainbocher from her closet under the loggia of her Old Westbury home, Templeton.

C.Z. Guest has spent her life in the pursuit of excellence and quality from around the world: linens from Mme Porthault in Paris (don't you just love the Porthault sheets with the pink hearts?  Porthault's Les Coeurs were designed for the Duchess of Windsor in 1960.  I bought them first for my daughter's bed and then feeling rather envious, for my bed at our beach house.  Not very masculine but thats what happens when the wife buys the linens: he gets to sleep on little pink hearts♡), riding coats made by Huntsman on London's Saville Row; saddlery from Pariani in Milan -"the Balenciaga of the tack world!"- and the trim, chic clothes of Valentino.  "How he could sew and how he could fit and how he could put in a sleeve!"as well as boutique clothes from Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent.  "I never had time for fittings when I was in Paris."

Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, the distinguished scion of the Phipps family and a supremely dashing, six-foot-four, ten-goal polo star was the love of C.Z.'s life.  "I was absolutely crazy about him.  My God, he was devastating.

Winston Guest 1930.

As a young wife, C.Z. continued to pursue her interests, riding and racing Thoroughbreds, and limited her shopping to biannual pilgrimages to her favored Manhattan dressmakers.  She also busied herself decorating residences in Long Island, Palm Beach and Manhattan.  She collaborated with Stéphane Boudin, the highly distinguished decorator from the French firm Jansen.

Templeton, Old Westbury New York now the De Seversky Center.

Winston and C.Z. Guest's penthouse apartment at 1 Sutton Place was 6,400 square feet.  The 17 room, full floor apartment had four maids' rooms, a servants hall and an additional 6,000 feet of wraparound terrace.  There were two ballrooms.  C.Z. Guest said that the apartment was "the most magnificent in New York City," but added: "It was not an apartment for a normal family.  We lived on one side, and my son, Alexander, lived with Nanny on the other side.  The New York Times

C.Z. Guest photographed by Cecil Beaton for Vogue

C.Z.'s effortless all-Amercian style was something of a revolution in her Francophile circle.  John Fairchild wrote in The Fashionable Savages, "She looks best wearing something so simple another lady wouldn't dare.  Many women make their grand entrance at Lincoln Center looking like exotic orchids dipped in diamonds and paint, while Mrs. Guest walks briskly down the aisle in  a pale cream cardigan suit." 

As a young man Oscar de la Renta was dazzled by this understated style when he was invited to old Templeton.  "The Duchess of Windsor was staying and there was Babe Paley and we were having drinks.  Suddenly, C.Z. appeared -with about 25 dogs - wearing a dark, dark grey long satin skirt and a cashmere pullover.  And I had never seen anyone dress that way.  There was the Duchess all in Dior, all gilded and jeweled, but C.Z. was totally natural.  Her life was about her dogs, her horses, her children." Hamish Bowles for Vogue 2002

C.Z. Guest in her linden allé at Templeton with her grandsons.  And wearing her own Capri sandals that she ordered by the dozens in the 1960s and still wears to this day.  

2002.  Photographed by Mario Testino for Vogue.

C.Z. Guest wearing oatmeal tweed Mainbocher in 1952 

"A woman should dress to suit her own looks 

not because something's in fashion"