Books: "The Saint Laurent Muse" By C.W. Gortner

 

The Saint Laurent Muse

By C.W. Gortner

William Morrow; paperback; $18.99; available today, Tuesday, March 18th

C.W. Gortner is the author of many bestselling historical novels, including Mademoiselle Chanel, which have been published in over twenty countries. Gortner came to New York City in the mid-1980s to pursue his dream of becoming a freelance fashion marketer. In that time, before conglomerates started buying up houses, his job could include anything from bringing coffee after a night of heavy partying, to helping choose models for a show, or working closely with a designer to finish their line. 

The time Gortner captures in his new, engrossing novel, The Saint Laurent Muse, mirrors the 1980s, which were lavish and dripping in indulgence. It was a heady and glorious time, which soon became overshadowed by the AIDS epidemic. The loss of many of his friends in the fashion industry propelled Gortner to be part of the fight against AIDS. He spent the next twelve years writing grants in the HIV-related public health arena. This novel is the story of everything he loves about that era in fashion and culture.

This is the glamorous and intoxicating tale of the friendship between designer Yves Saint Laurent and his clever muse, Loulou de La Falaise at the height of the fashion world in the 1970s.

The Paris fashion scene is fueled by glamour, sex, and cocaine nights, and its crown prince is Yves Saint Laurent. He is soulful and intensely gifted, known for creating sexy tuxedos for women and chic Rive Gauche boutiques that reflect women's desire for seductive independence.

This is a desire that Loulou, a reluctant aristocrat, knows all too well. In search of adventure, she escaped an early, unhappy marriage, to take a journey from hippie London to Warhol's Factory in New York before going on a whim to Paris. This champagne-soaked heart of the fashion scene is where the old world of haute couture and the new world of ready-to-wear are battling for the top spot.

Loulou had a bohemian flair that immediately caught Saint Laurent's attention, and the embark on a glorious intimate friendship as artist and muse. They revel in the excesses of high society, decadent parties, and the hedonistic underworld of gay nightclubs, where the young and beautiful become prey, and dangerous rivalries begin to emerge.

The path they are on collides with eccentric designer Karl Lagerfeld, who is intent on his own conquest. Yves soon finds himself having a secret affair with Karl's enigmatic young companion, and Loulou is falling in love with a colleague's handsome boyfriend. The evanescent illusion and savage deception of their affairs will bring them to the brink of ruin.

In this excerpt, we are introduced to Loulou, who was destined to be part of this world: When your mother baptizes you in a perfume named Shocking, you can expect to live an exceptional life.

Have you seen the container? The glass torso of a woman, the scent inside like liquid rose, under the gauzy exterior engraving of an Amazonian breastplate. Inappropriate for a teenage girl, let alone a baby, though I didn't realize it until later - and it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Mu mother had worked for the perfume's extravagant creator, Elisa Schiaparelli, whom Coco Chanel so despised that she once set fire to Elisa's dress at a party. Born Maxine Birley, my mother was an Irish aristocrat. Her father, Sir Oswald Birley, painted royal portraits, and her mother, Lady Rhoda Birley, fed bouillabaisse to her rosebushes and rode the fox hunt in a sari. My mother never believed in their way of life. To her, lineage was no excuse for settling for whatever the world happened to fling at you.

And she didn't settle. Her extramarital affairs so enraged my father, Count Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise, who could trace his ancestry back to the seventeenth century, that he sued her for divorce after only four years of marriage. It was 1950, so the French courts ruled in his favor, declaring her an unfit mother, and assigned us to Papa's custody. I was three years old. My brother, Alexis, was too.

It was only much later in life that I understood how deeply her desertion had affected me. Even so, I never resented her for it, though people often thought I should. She was the first person who taught me to be unexpected and create my own existence, though it would take many years for me too nurture the seed of wisdom from her chaos. I was expected to be so many things, you see, except for who I became.

No I can honestly say I have lived an exceptional life. A very unexpected one.

I witnessed a time that will never come again. An age of incandescent innovation and daring - not for nothing was Shocking my baptismal fount. An era of stunning acclaim and seismic rivalry, of white-powdered nights refracting on cube-mirrored walls and operatic mayhem under throbbing strobe lights. Of girls in swathed turbans and enamel bracelets stalking palatial catwalks, and fawning celebrities desperate to partake in our decadence. Of dagger-angled boutiques crowned by the initials of a prince whose reign was so supreme it make him a legend, and of secrets that tore us apart. 

I lived in the time of Yves Saint Laurent.

They called me his muse.