Yves Saint Laurent has died.....merci et au revoir, Monsieur

An homage to a dear friend.....but not Monsieur Saint Laurent.....

My husband and I sat in our apartment in Paris and, for an hour and a half, watched some of the most beautiful clothes we’d ever seen slinking up and down the catwalk of our television set. We were watching the final fashion show of Yves Saint Laurent. I’d have preferred to have been there, but was so happy and surprised it was televised I soon got over my disappointment. I wondered if Micheline, upstairs, had actually received an invitation to the show after all. The invitations had been sent out at the very last minute, and she’d told me that, if her husband had decided not to go with her, she would take me. But all those thoughts of whether Micheline was going and if I could go too were soon replaced by the sheer loveliness of the show broadcast on television now; the colors, the models, the music, the amazing talent of Saint Laurent. At the end, as the models surrounded him in their perfect black ‘smokers’, I stood and clapped in the middle of our Paris den as if I were in a front row seat.

The next afternoon, Micheline called me and told me that they had indeed gone to the show, and that the evening had been marvelous. Micheline had worked in the fashion industry for forty years, and had met Balmain, Givenchy, Saint Laurent, and so many other big designers in the fifties, sixties and seventies, “when fashion meant something in Paris!”, as she put it. To me, the end of Yves Saint Laurent meant the end of something special in the fashion world. To Micheline, the end of real fashion had come years ago, when “ladies stopped wearing beautiful clothes!”

“Nobody dressed!” were her first words as I entered her apartment the next day to hear about the night before. “Nobody wore anything lovely, nothing special! They were all dressed casually, it’s typical these days,” she lamented.

“Maybe they all came directly from their offices,” I offered. “Maybe the show started so early there was no time to go home and change.”

Micheline raised her eyebrows and squinted her blue eyes. “When I was young, we had no time, either! But we dressed! I would bring one, sometimes two other costumes with me to work if I had different engagements during the day. I might have lunch at Fouquet’s and cocktails at le Crillon that evening. One would never wear the same ensemble to both!”

That afternoon, Micheline showed me the black suit she’d worn to the Saint Laurent show, with a leopard collar and leopard, wide-rimmed hat with a black blusher covering her eyes. She also showed me her very, very high black heels. Micheline never wore flat shoes, even at home. She told me how the press snapped her photo frequently that night and how she’d enjoyed it, especially their comments. “But, you’re dressed so beautifully, can we have your photo?” from the Swedish photographer. “Madame, a hat!! We must have your picture!” from German photographers. I could see Micheline found it wonderful and sad at the same time. “In the fifties, we all wore beautiful clothes, nobody would be singled out for a photo simply because of that!”

We sat in her very Parisian apartment and sipped tea from the gold tea cart against the background of a Chinese screen. The gold velvet sofa is arranged with over-sized brocade pillows, the sky high windows fill this antiqued, quiet room with Paris light. We talked about her days in the fashion business, first in Paris, then in Los Angeles in the fifties, and, after that, back in Paris, where she was born and raised, and has lived ever since. “One wore a hat and gloves, it was normal! But I was often put in special designer clothes because I worked in public relations,” she told me. “The designers I worked for dressed me up for lunches here, or cocktails there, so people could see their clothes!” One outfit she won’t forget she described as a grey wool suit with fur lining on the collar and cuffs and a matching fur muff and tiny hat. “I was in the ladies room at La Duree when a very pretty young acquaintance saw me in that beautiful, very expensive suit I’d been given to wear that day. She looked at me up and down with envy!

“‘Are you being kept, Micheline?’ she asked me, very excitedly!”

Micheline’s beautiful blue eyes squinted at me again, a lovely, conspiratorial smile on her face. “You know what I answered her? I told her ‘YES!’ It was very shocking, but I said it! And I enjoyed it!” She remembered it like it was yesterday and seemed to get nearly the same thrill telling me now as she had saying “yessss!” those many years ago.

Finally, we walked down the long hall and she opened the door to what once must have been a bedroom but was now her closet. “I have so many clothes I don’t know what to do with them! Voila!” I walked in and felt like I was entering another era. One corner was piled high with hat boxes, elegant round pastel boxes with matching ribbons tied around them. There were rows of dress bags holding designer creations from the last fifty years. There were many shoeboxes and gloves in drawers, and coats of fur in such rich, deep colors. She was feeling nostalgic, I could see, and I, so hungry to hear about this very foreign past, couldn’t have been a better audience.

“I have old photos! Come see!” We walked further down the hall and she opened her bedroom door. The carpet was moss green, and the beds were covered in light blue feathery duvets, the draperies were pale pink silk, and in the corner sat an antiqued gold dressing table with beautiful crystal perfume bottles. Hundred year old fashion illustrations were framed in gold on the walls, but the most interesting corner was behind the door.

“Look!” she said. “I keep things I think are particularly beautiful, it’s silly, but I like them!” On the wall were old haute-couture fashion show announcements with fashionable sketches on their covers, and cut-outs of gorgeous gowns from fashion brochures. And there were pictures of hers and her husband’s families including old photos of Micheline when she was five years old, with an enormous white bow at the side of her head, on the beaches of Normandy. Photos from her and Claude’s tiny but elegant wedding were hanging with pictures of their parents, the mothers seated, pearls almost reaching the floor, the fathers standing, smiling through large waxed mustaches. And there were pictures of her sister, now a retired pediatrician who lives in New York City. “Neither of us had children,” she said. “Who will want all these pictures and my clothing when we are gone?”

We sat another hour or so, and she told me more stories about her life in Paris’ fashion industry. I listened to her talk about little white gloves, the perfect suit, how “of course, we all wore hats then, big rimmed hats, with veils!”, how she would have two dates in one night, and was able to rush home to change between them!

“Ah, yes,” Micheline said, as I stood up to leave, “I have many stories, and many beautiful things. Claude and I often talk about what will happen to these things when we are no longer here. Who will take these things, our travel souvenirs, or my beautiful clothes?”

I thanked her for the perfect afternoon and she softly closed the door behind me.

I don’t know what will happen to the things they’ve collected over the years. It’s very sad to think they might be discarded by someone who doesn’t care. But sadder still is what will happen to the stories she told me that day, and those she still keeps, as if in fancy hat boxes, all to herself? Where will those go, I asked myself, as I walked the one floor down to our apartment and back into the year 2002.

I had Monsieur Saint Laurent to thank, not only for forty years of fabulous clothing, but an afternoon I would never forget. I felt like clapping again right there on the stairs, clapping as I had the night before for his beautiful clothes on television, clapping now for having heard Micheline’s beautiful memories.

***

Micheline very suddenly passed away two years after this afternoon experience, while we still lived in that Paris apartment. May I thank Monsieur Saint Laurent again for inspiring that special afternoon with my lovely friend? I’m delighted to be able to find just the place to finally share this account I wrote six years ago. I loved Micheline and I will never forget her. Still makes me tear up. z

Yves Saint Laurent August 1, 1936 - June 1, 2008
May he rest in peace