Photographs by Markus Almeida
Tuesday, 29 May 2018
JEEVES / António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / Architectural Historian ... in London.
Photographs by Markus Almeida
Monday, 28 May 2018
TOOTAL Ties
Some images of a remarkable TOOTAL “choker”, coming from my own collection …
JEEVES
 |
Tootal
Product type Scarves, ties, fabrics, accessories
Owner Coats Viyella
Country United Kingdom
Introduced 1799
Markets Worldwide
Previous owners
Robert Gardner (1799)
Tootal Broadhurst Lee (1842)
Tootal Ltd. (1973)
Tootal Group plc (1985)
Website tootal.co.uk
|
Tootal is a brand name for a range of British ties, scarves
and other garments. The brand is now owned by Coats Viyella. It originates from
a textile spinning and manufacturing company established in Manchester in 1799,
which later became Tootal Broadhurst Lee, and subsequently Tootal Ltd. The
company held patents in crease-resistant fabric.
The firm identifies its origins in a company founded in
Manchester in 1799 by textile merchant Robert Gardner. The Tootal family, who
resided in Wakefield, Yorkshire, became involved in the company in the early
nineteenth century. Sarah Tootal married Daniel Broadhurst in 1811, and their
son Henry Tootal Broadhurst (1822-1896) – the brother of Charles Edward
Broadhurst and brother-in-law of Sir Joseph Whitworth – established a business
partnership in Manchester in 1842 with Edward Tootal and Henry Lee, who had
worked in Gardner's cotton goods warehouse.
The partnership opened the Sunnybank cotton spinning and
weaving mills, and became the largest manufacturer of hand looms in Blackburn,
but the partnership was dissolved in 1860. The firm then developed the
manufacture of fancy cloths, using steam-powered looms in place of hand looms,
and acquired mills at Bolton and Newton Heath for their manufacture. In the
1860s, Henry Tootal Broadhurst, Henry and Joseph Lee, and Robert Scott, were business
partners who formed a limited company, Tootal Broadhurst Lee, marketing their
goods under the name Tootal.
The company was notable for its vertical integration,
combining both spinning and weaving activities, and for its marketing network
which included offices and warehouses in Bradford, Belfast and Paris, and
national and international agencies promoting their goods. By 1888, when the
joint stock company Tootal, Broadhurst, Lee and Company Ltd. was formed, the
firm employed some 5,000 workers and operated 172,000 spindles and 3,500 looms,
making it one of the largest integrated cotton textile producing companies in
Lancashire. Sir Joseph Cocksey Lee (1832-1894), the brother of Henry Lee MP and
later an active promoter of the Manchester Ship Canal,[4] became its chairman.
At the same time, a separate company, the Lee Spinning Co., was also
established.
In 1898, the company opened a large new brick-clad warehouse
and office block, now known as Churchgate House, in Oxford Street, Manchester.
The building, designed by Joseph Gibbons Sankey, is now a Grade II* listed
building, described as "a powerful monument to the entrepreneurialism of
the Industrial Revolution and Victorian bombast." Plans in the 1930s to
build an adjoining warehouse which would have been the tallest building in
Europe at the time were never completed.
Tootal, Broadhurst, Lee continued to develop in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in 1907 Edward Tootal Broadhurst,
the son of Henry Tootal Broadhurst, succeeded Harold Lee (the son of Henry Lee)
as chairman. The company was an innovator in its promotion of brand names, and
in selling its goods direct to retailers. Though early in its history it
specialised in cotton fabrics, it later diversified into other yarns including
silk and rayon. It developed a range of fabrics in a wide variety of patterns,
including a velvet marketed as "Tootal cloth", and
"Tarantulle", used for lingerie and baby wear, as well as focussing
on products such as handkerchiefs, scarves and ties. The company provided
neckerchiefs and other items for soldiers in the Boer War. A research
department was established, and it was active in developing new innovations,
such as crease-resistant fabrics.[1] In the early 1920s, it took out patents on
urea-formaldehyde resins to produce crease-resistant fabrics, and
commercialised its patents by developing an international licensing programme,
with successful agencies being granted the use of the Tebilized registered
trade mark.
In the First World War the company was noted for giving
early guarantees that all their men returning after service would be reinstated
in their old positions. By 1939, Tootal had branches throughout Britain and
subsidiaries in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, and New Zealand, as well
as agencies throughout the world. The company participated in the 1947 British
Industries Fair, and featured its "Lystav, Robia and Tobralco patented
dress and furnishing fabrics, Pyramid men’s handkerchiefs and a bright display
of Tootal ties and scarves." New factories were opened in St Helens in
1947, and in Devonport, Tasmania, in 1952. In the 1960s, Tootal joined the
English Sewing Cotton Co., and later the Calico Printers Association, becoming
English Calico Ltd. which was renamed Tootal Ltd. in 1973. In 1985 it became
Tootal Group plc, and in 1991 was acquired by Coats Viyella, which disposed of
several of its subsidiaries.
Tootal scarves and ties in polka dot, Paisley and other
patterns are now regarded as iconic of the period between the 1920s and 1950s
in Britain, when they were advertised widely with the slogan: "Every Man
Needs… Tootal Ties". They were associated with the mod subculture in the
1960s, were again revived as fashion accessories in the 1980s and 2000s, and
are now seen as emblematic of classic British men's fashion.
Tootal Broadhurst Lee Co
of Radcliffe, Lancs, (now Greater Manchester)
of Manchester and Bolton, cotton manufacturers, later
textile spinners and manufacturers.
of 56 Oxford Street, Manchester. Telephone: Manchester,
Central 3244. Cables: "Tootal, Manchester". London Address: 21
Cavendish Place, Cavendish Square, London, W1. (1947)
• 1799 The company was founded in Manchester, by Robert Gardner,
a textile merchant.
• 1842 Tootal family involvement began.
• 1860s Sunnyside Mills, Bolton and Newton Heath Mills,
Manchester, were acquired.
• 1888 After several name changes, the firm became Tootal
Broadhurst Lee Co Ltd. The company was registered on 17 January, to take over
the business of spinners and manufacturers, carried on at Manchester, London
and elsewhere, under the firms of Tootal-Broadhurst, Lee and Co and the Lee
Spinning Co. [1]
• 1891 Directory (Radcliffe): Listed as Cotton spinners and
manufacturers. More details [2]
• 1891 Directory (Manchester and Salford): Listed as Cotton
Spinners and Manufacturers. More details. [3]
• 1891 Directory (Bolton): Listed as Cotton spinners and
manufacturers. More details. [4]
• 1918 A research department was established, which carried
out early work on creating crease resistant fabric. The company was notable for
its early use of brand names and was a leader in the field of selling direct to
retailers.
• By 1939, the firm had spinning, weaving and yarn dyeing
factories in Bolton and factories in Newton Heath, Manchester, weaving silk and
wool and producing handkerchiefs and ties. There were branches in Belfast,
Birmingham, Leeds, London and Glasgow and overseas in Argentina, Australia,
Canada, France, and New Zealand. The company had agencies throughout the world.
Subsidiaries’ activities included dress manufacture, bleaching, dyeing and
crease resistant finishing.
• 1947 A new factory was opened in St. Helens, Lancs. (now
Merseyside).
• 1947 Listed Exhibitor - British Industries Fair.
Mufacturers of Tobralco, Lystav, Robia and other Tootal Dress and Furnishing
Fabrics; of Pyramid Handkerchiefs, Tootal Ties and other Tootal Products.
(Earls Court, Ground Floor, Stand No 123) [5]
• 1952 A new factory was opened in Devonport, Tasmania.
• The company became a subsidiary of the holding company
Tootal Ltd, which joined English Sewing Cotton Co in 1963.
• 1968 This in turn merged with the Calico Printers
Association, becoming English Calico Ltd.
• 1973 This became Tootal Ltd.
• 1985 It became Tootal Group PLC, and is now part of Coats
Viyella plc.
(This historical account is mainly based on L. Richmond and
B. Stockford, ‘Company Archives’ (1968)):
Tootal Broadhurst Lee
Co
1961.
of 56 Oxford Street, Manchester. Telephone: Manchester,
Central 3244. Cables: "Tootal, Manchester". London Address: 21
Cavendish Place, Cavendish Square, London, W1. (1947)
of Ten Acres Mill, Newton Heath, Manchester; Sunnyside
Mills, Bolton; and Black Lane Mills, Radcliffe, textile spinners and
manufacturers.
1799 The company was founded in Manchester, by Robert
Gardner, a textile merchant.
1842 Tootal family involvement began.
1853 Tootal, Broadhurst and Lee were one of a number of
businesses who signed a petition in Manchester concerning the government of the
East Indies[1]
1856 "NOTICE is hereby given, that the Partnership
heretofore subsisting between us the undersigned, as Manufacturers, at
Manchester and elsewhere, under the firm of Tootal, Broadhurst, and Lee,
expired by effluxion of time on the 1st day of August, 1856, since which date
the business has been, and will continue to be, carried on by the undersigned
Henry Tootal Broadhurst and Henry Lee, on their own account; and they will
receive and pay all debts due to and from the said partnership.—Dated the 8th
day of December, 1857. Edward Tootal. Henry T. Broadhurst. Henry Lee."[2]
1859 Dissolution of the partnership of Tootal, Broadhurst
and Lee of Manchester, manufacturers, as regards E. Tootal[3]
Up to 1860 the firm was the chief manufacturer of hand looms
in Blackburn but then gave up this line of business in favour of fancy cloths,
for which they introduced steam power to replace hand powered looms[4]
1860s Sunnyside Mills, Bolton; and Newton Heath Mill,
Manchester, were acquired.
Henry Tootal Broadhurst, Henry and Joseph Lee and Robert
Scott were business partners who formed a limited company Tootal Broadhurst Lee
(or Tootal for short).
1887 The company was vertically integrated, combining
spinning and power-loom weaving, at a time when there was a tendency for firms
to specialize in a single process. A further distinctive feature of the company
was its marketing network, including offices and warehouses in Bradford,
Belfast, and Paris, and agencies further afield. Tootals employed about 5000
workers in 1887, and operated 172,000 spindles and 3500 looms, making it the
third largest vertically integrated cotton firm in Lancashire.
1888 Joint stock company formed: Tootal, Broadhurst, Lee and
Company Ltd in order to faciltate family and other arrangements; the new
company took over Tootal, Broadhurst, Lee and Co, merchants and manufacturers,
and Lee Spinning Co; no shares were issued to the public. Sir Joseph C. Lee was
to be chairman[5]
1888 The company was registered on 17 January, to take over
the business of spinners and manufacturers, carried on at Manchester, London
and elsewhere, under the firms of Tootal-Broadhurst, Lee and Co and the Lee
Spinning Co[6]
1891 Directory (Radcliffe): Listed as cotton spinners and
manufacturers. More details.
1891 Directory (Manchester and Salford): Listed as cotton
spinners and manufacturers. More details.
1891 Directory (Bolton): Listed as cotton spinners and
manufacturers. More details.
1907 Edward Tootal Broadhurst succeeded Harold Lee, son of
Henry Lee, as chairman
1918 A research department was established, which carried
out early work on creating crease resistant fabric. The company was notable for
its early use of brand names and was a leader in the field of selling direct to
retailers.
By 1939, the firm had spinning, weaving and yarn dyeing
factories in Bolton and factories in Newton Heath, Manchester, weaving silk and
wool and producing handkerchiefs and ties. There were branches in Belfast,
Birmingham, Leeds, London and Glasgow and overseas in Argentina, Australia,
Canada, France, and New Zealand. The company had agencies throughout the world.
Subsidiaries’ activities included dress manufacture, bleaching, dyeing and
crease resistant finishing.
1947 A new factory was opened in St. Helens, Lancs. (now
Merseyside).
1947 Listed Exhibitor - British Industries Fair.
Manufacturers of Tobralco, Lystav, Robia and other Tootal Dress and Furnishing
Fabrics; of Pyramid Handkerchiefs, Tootal Ties and other Tootal Products.
(Earls Court, Ground Floor, Stand No 123) [7]
1952 A new factory was opened in Devonport, Tasmania.
The company became a subsidiary of the holding company
Tootal Ltd
1961 In Bolton, subsidiaries of Tootal included:
Tootal Spinning Ltd.
Tootal Weaving Ltd.
1963 Tootal joined English Sewing Cotton Co
1968 This in turn merged with the Calico Printers
Association, becoming English Calico Ltd.
1973 This became Tootal Ltd.
1985 It became Tootal Group PLC
1991 Tootal Group plc was acquired by Coats Viyella plc[8]
which subsequently disposed of several subsidiaries of Tootal.
Thursday, 24 May 2018
Tom Wolfe obituary / Remembering Tom Wolfe, American writer with an 'anthropologist's delight'
Tom Wolfe obituary: a great dandy, in elaborate dress and neon-lit prose
Journalist and author who won a name as a brilliant satirist
with the ‘novel of the 1980s’, The Bonfire of the Vanities
Stanley Reynolds
Tue 15 May 2018 17.28 BST Last modified on Thu 17 May 2018
The writer Tom Wolfe, who has died aged 88, was a great
dandy, both in his elaborate dress and his neon-lit prose. Although he was in
his late 50s when he became a bestselling novelist, with The Bonfire of the
Vanities (1987), some 30 years before that he was already famous as a
journalist, was indeed that extremely rare thing, the journalist as
international celebrity.
It was a part Wolfe played up to, wearing showy tailor-made
white suits, summer and winter, as well as fancy headgear and shirts with
detachable collars. The overall impression was of a fashionplate from a bygone
age. The sartorial fireworks fitted in very well with the highly eccentric
literary style Wolfe used and which made such a name for him when he published
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965), which brought the
world the first news of the 1960s counterculture in California.
The curious style came about by chance. In 1963,
commissioned to write about custom cars for Esquire magazine, Wolfe got as far
as writing hurried notes and told his editor, Byron Dobell, to give them to
someone else because he could not produce the finished piece. Dobell read the
notes and printed them as they were.
The peculiar style, full of exclamation marks, words
elongated for special effect, and words in capital letters, gave the impression
of news that was too hot for the simple declarative sentence; also that it was
highly complicated to explain but that Wolfe himself knew all there was to know
about it, and from the inside. As the news was from the counterculture or,
later on, from the world of the New York new rich, the prose seemed to fit the
passion.
The Bonfire of the Vanities, the tale of the fall of a young
Wall Street trader, one of the self-styled “masters of the universe”, was
called the “novel of the 1980s” and won Wolfe a name as a brilliant satirist.
The one dark cloud in its success was that the 1990 film of the book, directed
by Brian De Palma, failed both critically and at the box office, in spite of
Tom Hanks playing the lead. The other Wolfe book turned into a movie fared much
better. This was The Right Stuff (1979), a non-fiction account of the first
astronauts. The 1983 film was made by Philip Kaufman and won four Oscars.
Fans had to wait 11 years for the next novel, A Man in Full
(1998), a rather disjointed and over-long look at the new south of the 90s.
This was attacked by John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving. Updike said it
was not literature but entertainment; Mailer described it as like being made
love to by a 300lb woman (“Fall in love or be asphyxiated”) and Irving said simply:
“He can’t fucking write.” Wolfe had a good time counter-attacking. He called
them “my three stooges”. He could afford to be offhand with his critics, for A
Man in Full had received an advance of $7.5m.
The wonderful early pieces received nothing but praise. The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) was called an American classic, “a DayGlo
book”, the Washington Post said. It was the story of a cross-country trip in a
bus by Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and his spaced-out
young followers, the Merry Pranksters, all high on LSD and passing it out free
in glasses of Kool-Aid.
Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970)
comprised more first-rate pieces of comic sociology, particularly the title
story about wealthy New York liberals making fools of themselves throwing
parties for the Black Panthers. The Pump House Gang (1968) and The Mid-Atlantic
Man (1969) were collections of articles; The New Journalism (1973) an
anthology; The Painted Word (1975) art criticism; From Bauhaus to Our House
(1981) architecture criticism; Ambush at Fort Bragg (1997) a novella, a Rolling
Stone magazine serialisation then in an audio-only version.
At the age of 73 and after suffering a heart attack and a
quintuple bypass, Wolfe surprised everyone with I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004),
a brilliantly funny and hard-hitting demolition job on American higher
education set in a fictional Ivy League university in Pennsylvania. Back to
Blood (2012), set in Miami and with a Cuban-American cop as its lead character,
was described by the Guardian’s reviewer as “like a novel for the hard of
hearing, megaphone meets ear trumpet”; The Kingdom of Speech (2016) challenged
theories of evolution and speech development.
Wolfe was born in Richmond, Virginia. In later years he
described his father, Thomas, as an agronomist, but in the early years he had
called him “a gentleman farmer”. Wolfe was encouraged to write by his mother,
Louise, and at nine, he tried his hand at biographies of Napoleon and Mozart.
He went to a private day school, St Christopher’s, in
Richmond, and then to Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia,
where he played baseball and edited the literary magazine Shenandoah. He told
me that he was very serious about being a baseball pitcher and once put on a
tremendous amount of weight in order to throw the ball harder. This was a
failure, because the weight slowed him up in the field.
After Washington and Lee, he went to Yale and got a PhD in
1957 in American studies. He then found a job in journalism on the Springfield
Union in Massachusetts. That is where I first met him. It would be pleasant to
think that his colleagues all saw what a success he would be, but this is not
true. We only saw that he was different. This we put down to his being a
southerner, and at that time in New England we were suspicious of southerners,
thinking they might have a slave or two stashed away in a backyard shed. His
southern ways were in fact sometimes shocking: he told jokes about black people
without taking in the pained expressions of his audience – or perhaps he was
doing it on purpose to annoy us.
Early on, he demonstrated his unusual angle on stories, and
it was not always appreciated. Once he was sent to cover an outdoor concert of
classical music in the Berkshire mountains and wrote a long piece about the way
people sat on the grass listening to it. This confused his editor at the
Springfield Union newspaper. Another time he was covering an event at Mount
Holyoke College in nearby South Hadley and wrote mainly about how the president
of the college held his chin in a jut-jawed fashion while speaking. The college
was furious and demanded an apology.
At this period he was spending most of his free weekends in
New York, taking drawing lessons from a New Yorker artist. This interest in
cartooning remained all his life; he published many of them and held one-man
shows. Wolfe left the Springfield Union for the Washington Post in 1959; he
then joined the old New York Herald Tribune in 1962 and there his real career
began.
He was surprisingly shy, and when The Kandy-Kolored
Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was published in the UK in 1966, he insisted
that I make the trip down from Liverpool to be with him in London. He put me up
in Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair. Nervous about the launch party being given by his
publishers, Jonathan Cape, we went out drinking all day long and for some
reason he started imitating WC Fields and could not stop it. It was amusing to
read, in the newspapers reporting the launch, about his extraordinary accent.
Although the book was picked for the American Book of the
Month Club and earned him $600,000, he was still very much a working
journalist. The Herald Tribune called him from New York and said he must send
them a story. He told me next day how lucky he was to have seen a man hit by a
taxi in London. The man was sitting in the street nursing a broken leg and
saying over and over again: “What a bore.” This, Wolfe thought, would show New
York what a strange use of language the English had.
Wolfe came to stay with me in Liverpool and while there
wrote much of what became The Mid-Atlantic Man. Every morning he went out in a
suit and tie with a packet of ginger nut biscuits to sit in the Sefton Park
palm house writing. He wrote everything in longhand first, using a fancy style
of calligraphy so that sometimes he was getting only 14 words to a page.
Afterwards he would rewrite on a typewriter, and never really took to
computers.
Wolfe was mistaken for a liberal when he first started out,
but his ultra-conservatism later became obvious. He not only supported Ronald
Reagan, calling him “one of the greatest presidents ever” but, much worse to
the east coast liberal mind, he praised George W Bush. When people said they
would leave the country if Bush was elected, Wolfe said he might go to Kennedy
airport to wave them goodbye. He thought Donald Trump “a lovable megalomaniac”,
and, comparing him to Reagan, concluded that “brilliance is really not a
requirement for politicians”.
In 1978 he married Sheila Berger, the art director at
Harper’s magazine. She survives him, along with their two children, Alexandra
and Tommy.
• Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, journalist and novelist, born 2
March 1930; died 14 May 2018
Sunday, 6 May 2018
Friday, 4 May 2018
The sale of the century: A look inside the Rockefeller auction
'An exceptional sale': dazzling
Rockefeller collection could fetch $1bn
Sprawling private collection of 1,600 of David Rockefeller’s
items will go on auction at Christie’s – and could break records
Oliver Laughland in New York
@oliverlaughland
Fri 4 May 2018 14.36 BST Last modified on Fri 4 May 2018
22.00 BST
In a bid to keep the sale as accessible as possible,
hundreds of items, including costume jewellery and furniture, are being placed
in an online auction where bidding starts as low as $100.
There was a hushed sense of awe among the spectators
perusing the nearly 1,600 items prepared for auction at Christie’s in
Manhattan. Elderly New York society doyennes walked through the collection with
private guides, stopping for a second to admire the Monets and Picassos, as
tour groups crowded by the ornate porcelains and decorative arts, spanning
centuries and continents, craning their heads to catch a glimpse.
But then, this is no ordinary collection, and it will
certainly be no ordinary auction.
Spread across three floors of Christie’s salerooms is the
sprawling private collection of David Rockefeller, the billionaire banker and
globetrotting philanthropist who died last year at 101. The last surviving
grandchild of the oil magnate and America’s first billionaire John D
Rockefeller, David Rockefeller spent much of his life collecting exceptional
works of modern art, which will now be sold to raise money for the family’s
preferred charitable causes.
Branded as a once-in-a-generation chance for global
collectors to buy some of the world’s most significant pieces still in private
collection, some predict the auction, which will take place over three days
next week, could be the first to raise $1bn in total.
“This is not just a New York event,” said Jonathan Rendell,
Christie’s deputy chairman. “It’s a world event. It is an exceptional sale.”
Among the collection’s highlights include Picasso’s Fillette
à la corbeille fleurie (Young Girl with a Basket of Flowers), one of the finest
portraits of his rose period. The painting had hung in the living room of
Rockefeller’s grand Manhattan home on the Upper East Side for decades. He
bought it from the estate of Gertrude Stein in 1968, meaning the painting has
only had two owners. It was described in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast,
the memoir of the author’s time in 1920s Paris, as hanging in Stein’s Left Bank
apartment.
The piece is expected to sell for over $100m.
Also on sale is Monet’s Nymphéas en fleur (Water Lilies in
Bloom), an important work in the artist’s series of water garden paintings. The
work is distinguished by the fact that all the lilies are in full bloom, and
was brought to New York after Rockefeller, with his wife Peggy, who died in
1996, purchased it from a dealer in Paris in 1956. The painting had hung at the
couple’s Hudson Pines estate in Sleepy Hollow, near the bottom of grand,
winding staircase, and is estimated to sell for between $50m and $70m.
The collection also includes a number of works from American
artists including Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe and Willem de Kooning – most
of them valued at over seven figures. Diego Rivera’s masterwork The Rivals,
painted in 1931 in a makeshift studio aboard the steamship that brought him and
Frida Kahlo to New York, will also be on sale – valued at up to $7m.
“Encountering the quality of these paintings has been a
fantastic journey for all of us,” Rendell said.
But even among these eye-watering estimates there is a sense
that Christie’s has veered on the conservative side. Following the $450m sale
of a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci at the end of last year, a price that
shattered auction records, some predict the auction’s banner items will go for
much higher than the estimated price.
Rendell would not be drawn on the issue. “I will wait until
next week and then I’ll say if it was a conservative estimate. This week, the
estimate is what the estimate is,” he said.
While the greatest monetary value lies in Rockefeller’s
modern art, the collection extends to an array of extraordinary artefacts, from
a dinner service Napoleon took with him into exile on the island of Elba in
1814, to a 13th-century Syrian incense burner unique in that it has Christian
and Islamic decoration. The burner had sat on Rockefeller’s desk until his death.
The Rockefellers purchased many of the pieces over their
decades of collecting for relatively small prices, only to see the valuation
balloon in recent years as the market surged.
Nonetheless, in a bid to keep the sale as accessible as
possible, hundreds of items, including costume jewellery and furniture, are
being placed in an online auction where bidding starts as low as $100.
To many in the art world, next week’s auction marks the end
of an era. Rockefeller, who had long pledged to sell his entire collection and
donate the proceeds to a group of chosen charities, was the last in a line of
tycoon collectors whose primary mission was to patronise the arts through their
purchases.
“It was the stagecraft of his life,” said Evan Beard,
national art services executive at US Trust, Bank of America’s private wealth
management division. “But the folks who will be buying a lot of this material
will be a new breed of collector, where they have at least one eye on the
financial component. Art for them is an extension of their financial life.”
Beard said he represented a number of buyers planning to bid
on some of the most lucrative items in the catalogue. A group of which were
hedge fund managers, “trophy hunting clients”, aiming to put together some of
the great private collections in the world.
Wednesday, 2 May 2018
Loulou de La Falaise; 4 May 1948 – 5 November 2011) / VIDEO: Loulou de la Falaise's Funeral with Catherine Deneuve, Kenzo, Arielle Do...
Loulou de La Falaise; 4 May 1948 – 5 November 2011) was a
fashion muse and designer of fashion, accessories and jewellery associated with
Yves Saint Laurent. Author Judith Thurman, writing in The New Yorker magazine,
called La Falaise "the quintessential Rive Gauche haute bohémienne".The
daughter of an Anglo-Irish fashion model and a French marquis, she helped
inspire Saint Laurent's 1966 women's tuxedo Le Smoking and his see-through
blouses, according to The Independent.
Louise Vava Lucia Henriette Le Bailly de La Falaise was born
on 4 May 1948 in England, the eldest child and only daughter of Alain, Count de
La Falaise (1903–1977), a French writer, translator and publisher, and his
second wife, the former Maxime Birley (1922–2009), an Anglo-Irish fashion
model, whom photographer Cecil Beaton once told, "You are the only English
woman I know who manages to be really chic in really hideous clothes".
Three of her christening names honoured relations: Louise
(her father's elder sister, who died as a teenager); Vava (one of the names of
her maternal grandmother, Lady Birley); and Henriette (the name of her paternal
grandmother, Henriette Hennessy, Comtesse Alain Hocquart de Turtot). La Falaise
was allegedly baptised not with holy water but with Shocking, the scent by
fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, her mother's employer.
After her parents' divorce in 1950, following her mother's
infidelities and a French court's declaration of her as an unfit mother, Loulou
and her brother went to live with foster families until she was seven. After
that, La Falaise was enrolled in English boarding schools, and "her school
holidays were shared between mother, father, and the second foster
family". She attended a boarding school in Switzerland as well as the
Lycée Français de New York, though was expelled from each due to her rebellious
nature.
La Falaise's maternal grandfather was portrait painter Sir
Oswald Birley, and an uncle was Mark Birley (1930–2007), restaurateur and
founder of the London nightclub, "Annabel's". Another uncle, her
father's elder brother, was Henri de La Falaise, Marquis de La Coudraye,
(1898–1972), film director and third husband of American actress Gloria Swanson
(1899–1983). Her paternal grandfather was a three-time French Olympic gold
medallist in fencing, Louis Gabriel de La Falaise (1866–1910).
Loulou de La Falaise had one sibling, Alexis Richard Dion
Oswald Le Bailly de La Falaise,(1948-2004), a furniture designer, who appeared
in the Andy Warhol film Tub Girls. After the death of her uncle in 1972, her
father became the Marquis de La Coudraye, as he died without issue. After her
father's death in 1977, her brother assumed the title, Marquis de La Coudraye
(until his death in 2004).
Her niece, Lucie Le Bailly de La Falaise (born 19 February
1973), a model, is the wife of Marlon Richards, son of Keith Richards and Anita
Pallenberg. Her nephew, Daniel Le Bailly de La Falaise (born 6 September 1970),
is a professional chef and food writer and the current Marquis de La Coudraye.
The family's actual surname is Le Bailly, though members
have used Le Bailly de La Falaise, referring to an ancestral estate, since the
mid 19th century; it is typically abbreviated to de La Falaise.
La Falaise moved to New York City in the late 1960s, where
she briefly modelled for American Vogue before turning to designing printed
fabrics for Halston. Late in the decade she worked as a junior editor at the
British society magazine Queen, during which time she met Saint Laurent.Eventually,
she moved to Paris, where she joined his haute-couture firm in 1972. Responding
to a description of her as a Saint Laurent muse in 2010, La Falaise responded,
“For me, a muse is someone who looks glamorous but is quite passive, whereas I
was very hard-working. I worked from 9am to sometimes 9pm, or even 2am. I
certainly wasn't passive.”
"Her official task was to bring her eccentric style to
accessories and jewellery, and she duly came up with often-chunky designs
incorporating large colourful stones, enamel work or rock crystal". La
Falaise also inspired Saint Laurent with her inventive wardrobe: "one week
she was Desdemona in purple velvet flares and a crown of flowers, the next
Marlene [Dietrich] with plucked crescent-shaped eyebrows". In 2002, when
Saint Laurent retired, La Falaise began producing her own clothing and
jewellery designs. As reported in The New York Times by fashion writer Cathy
Horyn, "The clothing line captured much of her rare taste—well-cut blazers
in the best English tweeds, French sailor pants in linen, striped silk blouses
with cheeky black lace edging, masculine walking coats with fur linings, and
gorgeous knits in perfectly chosen colors".
She also designed cloisonné boxes and porcelain vases for
Asiatides, as well as jewellery for the boutique of the Majorelle Gardens in
Marrakech, Morocco.
After more than three decades designing jewellery and
accessories for Saint Laurent, La Falaise launched her own fashion business,
designing ready-to-wear, costume jewellery, and accessories, which were
retailed in the U.S. as well as two Loulou de La Falaise shops in Paris.
She sold simplified versions of her jewellery designs in a
line created for the Home Shopping Network and created costume jewellery for
Oscar de la Renta. She operated two of her own shops in Paris, one of which was
designed by her brother, Alexis.
On 6 October 1966, she married Desmond FitzGerald, 29th
Knight of Glin (1937-2011), an Irish nobleman. They separated the following
year and divorced in 1970. Her title upon marrying the knight was Madam
FitzGerald.
On 11 June 1977, she married Thadée Klossowski de Rola, a
French writer, who is the younger son of the painter Balthus in Paris, France.
She wore a harem-and-turban ensemble from Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche. They
had one child:
Anna Klossowski de Rola, co-founder of the contemporary art
collection called "MGM."
La Falaise died at Gisors' hospital, France, on 5 November
2011.The cause of death was not specified, other than as the result of a
"long illness".An obituary published in Women's Wear Daily stated,
"According to sources, de la Falaise was diagnosed with lung cancer last
June, but implored intimates to keep her health a private matter".
 |
Loulou de la Falaise: Yves Saint
Laurent’s reluctant muse
For 30 years, she helped Saint Laurent see things through
rose-coloured glasses. A new book reveals why the troubled designer was drawn
to his right-hand woman’s more-is-more style
Lauren Cochrane
Wed 2 May 2018 06.00 BST
Loulou de la Falaise, a woman whose Wikipedia entry starts
by describing her as “a fashion muse”, always gave the idea short shrift. “To
me, a muse comes to have cookies and a chat and looks frightfully smart,” she
said. “I didn’t see it as someone who worked as hard as I did.”
As detailed in Christopher Petkanas’s book, Loulou &
Yves, De la Falaise was by Yves Saint Laurent’s side for 30 years. They began
to work together in 1972. “He was very vague about [my job],” she remembered.
“He didn’t specify what I was going to do.” Her daily responsibilities show she
was a multitasker of the highest order. They included everything from helping
decide on the colour of a collection (“Yves has a phenomenal sense of colour,
but he needs me to jerk it out of his system,” she said), to the casting of
models (she encouraged the house to use Kate Moss), designing the jewellery and
walking Saint Laurent’s French bulldog, Moujik. Principally, however, De la
Falaise was there as a taste check, someone to try ideas on – sometimes
literally – and to brainstorm with. “She is charm, poetry, excess, extravagance
and elegance all in one blow,” said the designer. “We make a stewing pot.
Things bubble and brew.”
De la Falaise’s style
is now the stuff of legend – and Pinterest boards. Headscarves and turbans
became her trademark – on her wedding day in 1977, she married Thadée
Klossowski in a white turban with coral-red tassels – while her attitude to
dressing could be summed up as: “Why wear one skirt/sweater/necklace if you can
wear four?” As with all style icons – from Jane Birkin to Kate Moss and Rihanna
– a frustratingly indefinable flair was at the heart of it. “I’ve always longed
to pull off wearing a couture dress with a bit of old tat from a flea market,”
says De la Falaise’s sometime associate Nicky Samuel in Petkanas’s book, “but
only a few women succeed.” De la Falaise was one of them.
If De la Falaise was part-inspiration at Saint Laurent, she
was also there to gee up the famously troubled designer, with her trademark
light disposition. Betty Catroux, who is also described as a Saint Laurent
muse, says De la Falaise “saw everything through rose-coloured glasses. She was
our Prozac”.
As with many people who present as sweetness and light, De
la Falaise had her own troubles. Born in the UK to the French writer Alain de
la Falaise and socialite Maxime Birley, she and her brother Alexis were sent to
live with a couple in rural France as children. De la Falaise’s first
fashion-show experience was being taken to Paris as a child by her aunt, Gloria
Swanson, and she was friends with Andy Warhol by the time she was 15. She used
drugs and alcohol, and developed hepatitis in her 20s; she died three years
after Saint Laurent, in 2011, at the age of 63. While she had started her own
label after parting ways with Saint Laurent when he retired from the house in
2002, it is for her associations with the designer that she will be remembered
– muse or not. Her importance was summed up by Paris Match after she died. The
headline? “The second death of Yves Saint Laurent.”
|
Loulou & Yves: The Untold Story
of Loulou de La Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent
By Christopher Petkanas
No one interested in fashion, style, or the high-flying
intrigues of café society will want to miss the exuberantly entertaining oral
biography Loulou & Yves: The Untold Story of Loulou de La Falaise and the
House of Saint Laurent, by Christopher Petkanas.
Dauntless,“in the bone” style made Loulou de La Falaise one
of the great fashion firebrands of the twentieth century. Descending in a
direct line from Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, she was celebrated at her
death in 2011, aged just sixty-four, as the “highest of haute bohemia,” a
feckless adventuress in the art of living―and the one person Yves Saint Laurent
could not live without.
Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) was the most influential
designer of his times; possibly also the most neurasthenic. In an exquisitely intimate,
sometimes painful personal and professional relationship, Loulou de La Falaise
was his creative right hand, muse, alter ego and the virtuoso behind all the
devastatingly flamboyant accessories that were a crucial component of the YSL
“look.” For thirty years, until his retirement in 2002, Yves relied on Loulou
to inspire him with the tilt of her hat, make him laugh and talk him off the
ledge―the enchanted formula that brought him from one historic collection to
the next.
Yves’s many tributes shape Loulou’s memory, as if everything
there was to know about this fugitive, Giacometti-like figure could be told by
her clanking bronze cuffs, towering fur toques, the turquoise boulders on her
fingers and her working friendship with the man who put women in pants. But
parallel to this storyline runs another, darker one, lifting the veil on
Loulou, a classic “number two” with a contempt for convention, and exposing the
underbelly of fashion at its highest level. Behind Yves’s encomiums are a pair
of aristocrat parents―Loulou’s shiftless French father and menacingly chic
English mother―who abandoned her to a childhood of foster care and sexual abuse
straight out of “Les Misérables”; Loulou’s recurring desperation to leave Yves
and go out on her own; and the grandiose myths surrounding her family. Loulou
felt that her life had been kidnapped by the operatic workings of the House of
Saint Laurent, and in her last years danced with financial ruin. Delving beyond
the “official” version of her life, Loulou & Yves unspools an elusive
fashion idol―nymphomaniacal, heedless and up to her bracelets in coke and
Boizel champagne―at the core of what used to be called “le beau monde.”
On the theory that everyone loves a cocktail party, Loulou
& Yves traces her life chronologically through the charming literary device
of oral biography, in which the spoken memories of more than two hundred
“voices”―husbands, lovers, extended family, friends, enemies, slightly less
bitter detractors, colleagues, groupies, pundits, and hangers-on―are seamlessly
interwoven with those of Yves and Loulou themselves. Readers mingle at the
party as invited guests, listening in on Andy Warhol and Karl Lagerfeld and
collecting clues from Mick Jagger and Tom Ford as the narrative unfolds.
Topping the A-list of figures who tell Loulou’s story in their own words,
uncensored, are Cecil Beaton, Diana Vreeland, Thadée Klossowski, Robert
Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Hubert de Givenchy, Manolo Blahnik, Diane von
Furstenberg, Elsa Peretti, Betty Catroux, John Richardson, Alber Elbaz,
Christian Louboutin, Grace Coddington, Ben Brantley, Bruce Chatwin, Lady
Annabel Goldsmith, André Leon Talley, and Pierre Bergé. In a fluent round of
sparkling conversation, author Christopher Petkanas brings them all together
for a party that swirls around one of the most scintillating women the fashion
world has ever known.
“She’s the sounding board,” Yves rhapsodizes of his second
self in Loulou & Yves, a sweeping, waspish work of fashion and social
history. “She’s never wrong.”
About Christopher Petkanas
Marjorie R. Williams author photo_credit Kent Lineback
While living in Paris, Christopher Petkanas covered Loulou
de La Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent from 1982 to 1988, picking up with
Loulou again more than two decades later, in 2010, the year before she died. He
has written for The New York Times, Vogue, and Architectural Digest, and his
previous books are At Home in France: Eating and Entertaining with the French,
and Parish-Hadley: Sixty Years of American Design (with Sister Parish and
Albert Hadley). He now resides in New York