Loulou de la Falaise, a fashion world figure who latterly had her own brand but was famous mainly for being one of Yves Saint Laurent’s muses, died over the weekend. She was 63. That’s her, below right, with YSL and another one of his muses, Betty Catroux.
L-R Betty Catroux, Yves Saint Laurent and Loulou de la Falaise. Getty Images.
When I heard about Ms de la Falaise’s death yesterday I was sad - she represented an era and a singularly flamboyant, very je ne sais quoi approach to dressing that will be missed – but it also got me thinking about the whole “muse” issue. This has got to be one of the worst job titles in all of fashion. It practically screams “dilettante”, and often suggests “should work for free” (or at the very most for free clothes). But that ain’t necessarily so. Isn’t it time we addressed the issue?
Maybe once upon a time being a “muse” was a sideline - say in the early days of fashion, when muses seemed mostly to be designers’ friends and customers: women who wore their clothes in interesting ways and thus inspired them.
But back in the day when the Greeks originated the whole idea, it was a full-time gig, and an important one: Erato and her sisters were essentially the key ingredient to the constant flow of creativity. You couldn’t really be an artist without their help, the way you can’t really be chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company without a chief operating officer and a chief financial officer and so on.
Indeed, Ms de la Falaise did work, as do her peers (Amanda Harlech at Chanel, Camille Miceli at Vuitton and now Dior). They don’t just stand around and airily opine when they deign to drop in. Often they design on some level (in many cases accessories), but they also research, force designers to rethink, and tell a male creator if something does, or does not, work on a woman’s body. They are also eternally available (the creative mind does not sleep, etc.) and often not very appreciated (the late Isabella Blow famously felt she was underpaid, if she was paid at all). And when such figures are absent in a house, it’s not difficult to tell: that’s when critics start carping about non-female-friendly clothes, and things not sitting right on anyone who doesn’t have a model’s frame.
To a certain extent, the work element of muse-dom has been acknowledged, though generally this has taken the form of smart thinking by Hollywood agents, who have recast the muse role as “ambassador” (after all, if there’s one thing the folks at the Creative Artists Agency understand, it’s casting) and priced it accordingly. But what of the women who do this without an agent’s help, as their day job?
Here’s what I think: forget the word “muse.” It doesn’t really describe the substance of the job anymore, and it’s dismissive. Fashion houses should rather take a page from other big businesses and rename the post what it is: “Special Adviser”.
Those of us with a thing about the rigour of language may not think that is much more specific than “muse”, but in the corporate or political lexicon it unquestionably carries the public punch of a proper job (just ask Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama). And as a legacy for Ms de la Falaise, it would be truly fitting.
Pun kind of intended.
Vanessa has been the FT’s fashion editor since 2003, and is based in New York, though she lived in London for 12 years.