The Saint Laurent Muse
Gortner pulls us forcefully into his wildly brave, achingly seductive novel. It’s the early ´70s—free love, drugs and flower power, civil rights, Vietnam, street demos, a time when ‘groovy’ was the grooviest thing to be in London. Quorum, Biba, and Habitat are retail synonyms for contemporary, affordable and stylish in the 1960s. Building on that success, in Paris, Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche line knocked the snobbish socks off haute couture, offering high fashion prêt-à-porter (literally ‘ready-to-wear’) to the average person on the street: a revolution hard won by its designers and not without severe pain.
Loulou de la Falaise is a nonconformist free spirit. With no formal background in fashion, her design work with Yves is groundbreaking. This becomes a deeply personal connection as Yves’ love life spins out of control. Gortner doesn’t mince his words; there’s no sugar-coating the hedonistic, luxurious lifestyle lived amongst copious amounts of drug and sex-fuelled parties and Marrakesh holidays. Yves’ long-term relationship with business and life-partner, Pierre Bergé, hits a roadblock when Yves falls hard for one of Karl Lagerfeld’s protégés, a dangerously sexy, narcissistic male model. Meanwhile Loulou can’t stop her burgeoning feelings for Thadée Klossowski, potentially disrupting the fashion house’s hard-won family tapestry, and not without consequence. Yves’ brilliance, moodiness and volatility, his low self-esteem, and his substance abuse are all captured in visceral detail. Talitha Getty, Bianca and Mick Jagger, Paloma Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Nureyev get bit parts, but not as revered stars of anything much. They’re just ordinary people in an overindulgent and over-indulged social set, getting ripped along with everyone else and whose fragility is no different than anyone’s.
I’m a long-time fan of Gortner’s biographical historical fiction, and his writing is skillful and controlled. This offering is explicit and powerful with a deeply personal approach. I might even say, his best novel to date!
