I'm writing a lot about death this week, what with
Octavia Saint Laurent passing.
Maxime de la Falaise, another fabulous creation of a woman cannot go without a mention.
This grand dame, expert lover and couture-wearing schoolgirl who designed with Yves Saint Laurent and Elsa Schaparelli passed away at the end of April this year.
I first came across her in a book called
Vogue Women, by Georgina Howell. The black and white photos of her lounging, posing showed her to be much more dangerous and seductive than my previous idol, Audrey Hepburn. She and her daughter Loulou were a smashing pair of expert posers - Loulou became YSL's muse with their severe chin thrusts and hip sways.
Maxime was expected to look wonderful from the get go.
Born Maxine Birley on June 25 1922 in England and grew up at grew up at the
family's 11th century house in Sussex.
Self-possessed, and handsome in that feminine way, she became a Vogue columnist, appeared in the Warhol film Dracula, had an affair with a Russian photographer working for Vogue met and married Comte Alain de la Falaise. Following her marriage she had a series of riotous affairs, with Italian playboys, Louis Malle, John Paul Getty III and Max Ernst.
I used to wear any manner of ridiculous things to school, as I'm quite sure many reading will attest, but de la Falaise used to wear her mother's exquisite Elsa Schiaparelli pieces to school, later becoming a saleswoman at the company. "I could
have charged other pupils to look at my clothes," she once told the
Telegraph(UK) magazine, "they were absolutely in awe of them." What a life.
How many idols like de la Falaise exist anymore? The fabulousness of wearing couture to school is practically unheard of outside a small circle of Russian oil oligarchs' daughters. Most "celebrities" who manage to make themselves known aren't worth knowing. That hedonistic jet-setting lifestyle of the person who seems to do nothing and everything has evaporated, leaving us with cosmetics contracts, up-skirting papparazzi and footballers wives. Oh Falaise, thanks for being.
