LA REBELLE: VICTOIRE DOUTRELEAU

VICTOIRE DOUTRELEAU DIDN’T FIT HAUTE COUTURE’S PREVAILING MOLD—SO SHE DESIGNED HER OWN. NEXT TO INDUSTRY GIANTS LIKE CHRISTIAN DIOR AND YVES SAINT LAURENT, SHE CHANGED THE COURSE OF FASHION HISTORY.

By Alexandre Samson

When Victoire makes her entrance, it’s as though she’s marching into battle. It’s in the way she has made the conventional image of a model a thing of the past. Exuding confidence with her ever-so-slightly contemptuous smile and her contemporary physique, she twirls in a way that silences any naysayers.

Christian Dior, Dior and I, 1957

The year is 1953. And an 18-year-old model’s arrival at the House of Dior was like a bolt from the blue. Curvy, but also “plump,” “hippy,” and “busty” according to the press, and relatively short (5’3”), the girl who was known as Jeanne Devis immediately distanced herself from the other models. Christian Dior took her under his wing and bestowed upon her what would turn out to be a prophetic name.

In his autobiography published only a few months before his death in 1957, the designer devoted more space to Victoire Doutreleau than to any other model. He gave her a copy, dedicated only to her, and suggested she use discretion in sharing it so as not to arouse jealousy. Victoire kept her copy of the book, whose worn cover opens to reveal Dior’s handwriting in black ink: “For my little Victoire, who lived up to her first name so well.”

“I was different,” Victoire declares today, “and I think he had a lot of fun with me.” Now 91 and elegant as ever, she lives surrounded by photographs and press clippings detailing her adventures in the world of fashion. Nestled in her armchair in the center of the room, she enjoys a glass of red wine through a glass straw.

“I had never heard so much criticism directed towards a model as the criticism that greeted Victoire’s arrival,” Dior wrote. “No one gave her a chance.” The shock that accompanied the young model’s arrival in the 1950s was comparable to the rumblings when Kate Moss made her fashion debut in the late ’80s and was mocked for her “sickly” androgynous look, which ran counter to the athletic looks favored by most supermodels at the time. Victoire, with a figure closer to that of a pin-up than a stiff haute couture model, challenged that era’s definition of beauty.

Dior claimed a critic once asked him, “How dare you feature a model who looks like that?” Some even went so far as to declare that Victoire’s presence was an insult to his clientele. It’s surprising now that such a furor would be directed towards Dior, who was known for his calm demeanor and level-headedness. But he was unrelenting, and starting with his next collection, the gamble paid off: “People swore by her from then on in,” he said. “Their eyes had opened.”

For Dior—who was a superstitious man—the public’s infatuation with Victoire validated his good fortune. Above all, he sought to prove that his creations could suit a variety of body shapes and sizes, and be more contemporary as well. Victoire corresponded to the bodies and the attitudes of the new generation that Dior observed in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. For instance, her breakthrough opened the door for Brigitte Bardot, who had yet to achieve cinematic success with And God Created Woman (1956).

Victoire’s charm extended well beyond her looks: She exuded equal parts confidence and brazenness. “I loved to smile as much as I loved to laugh,” she says. “Sometimes, it was like my eyes were smiling, without my even realizing it.”

The young model showcased her uniqueness during fashion shows that could extend beyond two hours. There, in a reverent silence broken only by the master of ceremonies detailing the models, their names, and their numbers, Victoire captivated one and all. “Dior’s models had an old, frozen look,” she says. “I felt like they used poses from a bygone era and I didn’t want to look like them at all. I had a more natural aesthetic than the others [did], as well as my own unique gestures. I would spin and twirl during the shows, no matter how heavy my dress was.”

Victoire fondly recalls some of her favorite outfits: High on the list are the sheath dresses that would hug her bustline and elongate her silhouette. Amadis comes to mind: a strapless gown embroidered with pink satin that she wore at a 1954 show held at Blenheim Palace to benefit the British Red Cross.

Looking back, Victoire pokes fun at the discomfort caused by some of the creations, which are now considered to be masterpieces in the history of fashion. Christian Dior’s pumps—sculpted by Roger Vivier—elicit the following recollection: “He really damaged my feet,” she smiles. “His creations were lovely but oh so uncomfortable.”

Along with the Dior fittings and fashion shows, Victoire also posed for fashion magazines. It wasn’t easy at first. “I hated being photographed,” she says. “I was a true runway model. I had to practice in the mirror, and I hated looking at myself. But then, after garnering some experience, I learned how to make the camera my ally. That combination of attitude and the pose, it’s like a mime game.” She learned her trade in the company of the era’s best photographers, including Irving Penn, who published their sessions in Vogue.

Some of those photographs now line the walls of her Geneva apartment. In the entranceway are two large, charcoal portraits that capture her in her natural state, with her hair loose. Dated 1960, they are signed by Yves Saint Laurent.

Saint Laurent joined Dior in 1954, the year after Victoire did, and became Dior’s assistant. His talent was evident and burgeoning, and his friendship with Victoire quickly intensified. They’d spend evenings exploring Parisian nightlife replete with shady clubs like L’Hélicoptère and Le Fiacre, often accompanied by Karl Lagerfeld. Both Saint Laurent and Lagerfeld had won awards at the International Wool Secretariat that same year. Shortly after, Lagerfeld ended up joining Pierre Balmain’s studio before being appointed couturier at Maison Patou.

The trio would regularly be joined by Anne-Marie Poupard, composer Henri Sauguet’s niece. Poupard began work at Dior’s studio as an assistant before later becoming one of the members of the Saint Laurent inner circle. The two future couturiers (Saint Laurent and Lagerfeld) would engage in a discreet battle to win over Victoire’s affections, showering her with gifts, drawings, and photographs.

Victoire has several amateur photos housed in a binder that show the foursome in the mid-’50s. Some of the photographs are with Lagerfeld—one shows the model and the designer standing on a beach wearing swimsuits. During that time, Victoire learned of Lagerfeld’s talent for image manipulation. It wasn’t the quality of the shots that was striking—in fact, the photos tended to be blurry. Rather, it was his talent for retouching, and, by extension, fabricating.

“We weren’t originally alone in this photograph,” Victoire says, pointing to a large, empty area on a beach. “Anne-Marie [Muñoz] was there too. In fact, she posed with us.” Lagerfeld was never shy in declaring his reasoning. “He wanted us to be alone in the photographs,” she adds while removing another photo from the binder. “Anne-Marie was there also,” she said, pointing to an empty spot on a bench at the Ritz in 1959, where they were all seated. “With Karl, everything had to be a secret.”

Saint Laurent became the House of Dior’s artistic director following Dior’s death. His first collection was a triumph, and Victoire was omnipresent. It was also around this time that Pierre Bergé became Saint Laurent’s lover and mentor, and he joined the circle of friends upon arriving at the House of Dior. Bergé’s increasing hold on Saint-Laurent, however, was becoming irksome to management.

Matters came to a head in July 1960 when Saint Laurent presented a “Beatnik” collection that was widely ridiculed. The collection evoked the youth movement replete with leather jackets and a group of young people on motorbikes who were emulating actor Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953). That youth movement was causing concern in France. Although the collection was a commercial success, Saint Laurent’s ever-expanding ego, galvanized by Bergé, was becoming tiring.

“Pierre was demanding far too much,” recalls Victoire. “Too much money, a driver for Yves... And management knew that the house could survive without a talented and charismatic couturier at the helm. There were others who could be found, who could produce similar collections at a lower cost. So, management took advantage of Yves’s compulsory military service as an opportunity to dismiss him.”

Saint Laurent knew his future was in jeopardy, and he fell into a serious depression upon being discharged from the army. In the summer of 1961, Bergé took him out of a military hospital and Saint Laurent began living on a houseboat that moored on a quay along the Seine, where Victoire would often go visit him.

In the meantime, Victoire left Dior. On the lookout for new clothing trends, she’d meet with designers and was always received with open arms. “Remember, I was still Victoire,” she says with a smile. One of the designers whom she met was André Courrèges, who had recently left Balenciaga to open his own company. He offered Victoire a piece from his debut collection in a tangible expression of his admiration.

And then there was Chanel. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s couture house closed in 1939 with the onset of World War II. It then reopened in 1954, and enjoyed a run of success. Chanel’s prototype of the woman’s suit, developed at the end of the decade, became an essential. Intrigued, Victoire contacted the fashion house to see if they had an interest in her talents. It was Chanel herself, along with her favorite model Marie-Hélène Arnaud, who welcomed Victoire.

Chanel proceeded to show Victoire a suit. “We’ll design it in white,” the couturier told her, “and we’ll make three of them: one for you, one for Marie-Hélène, and one for me.” Chanel was ecstatic. Dior had been one of Chanel’s most prominent competitors, whose success in 1947 had motivated her to relaunch her fashion house. To have his favorite model wear Chanel came as a complete surprise. “Dior is wearing Chanel,” she gloats. “Later on, when Karl found out,” Victoire said, “he couldn’t believe it. And Yves, of course, was quite upset, but more about André than Chanel.”

Alone and isolated on his houseboat, Saint Laurent grew increasingly despondent. Victoire and Pierre Bergé had tried to cheer him up, but what Saint Laurent did not know was that his lover and his friend were having an affair behind his back, an affair they had kept hidden from him for quite some time. “There was no romance between us, it was sexual,” Victoire later confided to the press. Victoire’s uninhibited sensuality exerted a strong sexual attraction on both men and women: A case in point being the model Sophie Litvak, who had tried to make Victoire her lover. “But, you know, things never tend to be that simple,” Victoire says.

One day in the summer of 1961, while Victoire was visiting Saint Laurent’s houseboat, she came face to face with Lagerfeld. “Without saying a word,” Victoire says, “he kissed me on the mouth. And I let him do it. Pierre Bergé then appeared, and he was furious. Pulling me by my arm he shouted, ‘What are you doing? Why did you kiss Karl? That’s not your place!’ I pulled away, but when I left the houseboat, Karl—as always, mysterious—had vanished. We were always at odds with Pierre and Yves, because they were never satisfied with a simple friendship, they always wanted more.”

It was at this time that Bergé garnered the funding necessary to launch the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house. Victoire joined as a model and haute couture director. Victoire’s mother, who was a seamstress, also joined to develop the initial pieces.

Victoire opened Saint Laurent’s first fashion show in 1962 on Rue Spontini. “I embodied the kind of woman that Saint Laurent wanted,” she says. She had also been tasked with recruiting other models, and she wanted them to be different from those working at Dior. “For instance, Saint Laurent didn’t care about faces,” Victoire recalls. “He wanted a certain allure, an almost African look—straight shoulders, longer legs.”

After a shaky launch, Saint Laurent’s success suddenly went stratospheric. Meanwhile, the Victoire-Bergé-Saint Laurent friendship was fading. The spats, albeit the norm, had become irreconcilable. Uncomfortable with the increasing hostilities, Victoire—who had lost interest in being a model—left the nascent fashion house during the summer of 1963, at which point her career took a new direction.

Encouraged by Lagerfeld, she launched a ready-to-wear collection. Haute couture, which was dominated by male designers at the time, was running out of steam, while ready-to-wear (having become very popular) brought many women’s talents to the forefront. “Women are more aware of style,” Victoire explains, “and have an eye for details. They’re also more pragmatic when it comes to clothing that they themselves can wear.”

Victoire, with her design background in tow, began to create clothes, including jeans and flared trousers, aimed at teenage girls for major retailers. In 1966, she signed a contract in partnership with Mary Quant and the American firm JCPenney, and they presented their collections in New York. But despite her success, Victoire stopped creating in 1970. “I remarried with the painter Pierre Doutreleau, with whom I had two children,” she says. “It was impossible to go to work in the United States while also being a mother of two children and a wife.”

Through their friendship, Victoire bore witness to the emergence of two major designers: Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. “I had a feeling that they’d go far and then even further still,” she says, very aware of their respective talents. “I was not surprised by Yves’s extraordinary career, and even less surprised by Karl’s.”

Victoire also downplays the perceived rivalry between the two men: “Karl was never interested in what Yves was doing, he frankly didn’t care. They got along well, at least until Jacques de Bascher’s arrival in 1973. However, it was Pierre Bergé who resented Karl, whose talent—unlike Yves’s—was quick to materialize. That friendship didn’t last.”

Although ultimately distanced from Saint Laurent, Victoire remained close to Lagerfeld. “He didn’t have the same talent level as Yves did, but he did surpass him in many ways,” she says. Victoire also provided Lagerfeld with some advice: “In the 1960s, when he worked for Chloé, I found it surprising that he worked in the shadows. Karl told me, ‘I work for many brands, and I never put my name on them.’ But he understood where I was coming from, and he found ways to make his presence and his personality felt, with the success that we came to know.”

Chanel’s hiring of Lagerfeld in 1983 did not come as a surprise to her either. The Chanel brand was emblematic of globalized fashion; its spectacular runway shows spotlighted other phenomena, such as the rise of supermodels.

Today, the fashion world seems oh-so-very-distant to Victoire. She views it with befuddlement, especially the relatively recent media obsession with the celebrities who sit in the front rows at fashion shows, often to the detriment of the creations and the models who wear them. When told that many of these “guests” are remunerated and asked if she would have accepted such an offer, she ponders the question for a moment, then takes another sip of wine through her straw, and cracks that killer smile: “You can’t be a rebel and then stoop to such things.”