Maxime de la Falaise, model, muse, designer, and mother to Loulou, died on Thursday April 30th at the age of 86.
Falaise and her daughter were both once muses to the legendary Yves Saint Laurent, and Maxime designed for the late Saint Laurent back in the seventies. She worked as a food writer for Vogue, and as a designer for the French ready-to-wear designer Gérard Pipart.
De la Falaise counted Elsa Schiaparelli (who she modeled for), and Andy Warhol among her friends. She appeared in his 1974 underground film “Andy Warhol’s Dracula” and reportedly often cooked for him.
De la Falaise died of natural causes in her home in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. A longtime trendsetter in London, Paris and New York society, Falaise was always widely photographed. She became a countess when she married a French count, Alain de la Falaise, in the 1940’s.
Born into an artistic family on June 25, 1922, in West Dean, in the West Sussex region of England Maxime De la Falaise’s career in fashion let her to eventually work as a consultant to Yves Saint Laurent’s licensees in the United States.
She had two children with the Count – her daughter Louise, known as Loulou, who was a long-time fashion model, and a son, Alexis, a furniture designer who died several years ago. After divorcing the Count, she married John McKendry, the curator of prints and photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. McKendry died in 1975.
Besides her daughter, Maxime de la Falaise is survived by several grandchildren, including Lucie de la Falaise, who was a well-known model in the 1990s, and some great-grandchildren.
Images courtesy of the Fashion Spot forums.
