The cool black legacy of YSL’S muse Betty Catroux
An exhibition honours the allure of the former model through her vast archive. Bethan Holt reports
They don’t make fashion muses like Betty Catroux any more. In a world of front rows populated by multi-hyphenated entrepreneur/ model/dj/crystal healers who mostly only turn up for a fee, Catroux remains a rare enigma. She’s 75 now – and was the coolest presence at last week’s Saint Laurent show – but her idiosyncratic brand of rebellion, androgyny and froideur provided Yves Saint Laurent with endless inspiration.
Yesterday, a new exhibition dedicated to Catroux opened at the YSL museum in Paris. Feminine Singular celebrates the allure of the socialite and sometime model (she told The New York Times this week that “a big project of mine is never to do any work”) through the lens of her vast personal collection of YSL pieces, amassed from her first acquaintance with the designer in 1967, through to his final collection in 2002 – and now donated to the museum.
Of the 180 pieces of couture and 138 ready-to-wear items Catroux has given to the archive, most are black. If the fashion crowd were once known as “crows”, thanks to their predilection for wearing all black, then Catroux is surely queen of the murder. “I’ve always dressed like a priest,” she says. “Strict, black, leather.”
Although images of her from the YSL heyday occasionally portray her in a safari jacket or a grey tweed suit, black has always been Catroux’s thing, and it’s rare now to see her in anything other – a flash of deep indigo denim or leopard print being rare displays.
The exhibition also includes some brilliant holiday photographs from the private collection of Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé, which depict Catroux in less severe mode, wearing relaxed shirts and lean shorts.
Trouser suits and blazers might be everywhere for women now, but it was Saint Laurent – and arguably Catroux, who was obsessed with wearing men’s clothes – who elevated the tuxedo jacket into a symbol of cool glamour for women. “I wore the tuxedos mismatched, nude under the jacket, with no accessories. I could wear the jacket with a pair of black leather trousers or black denim jeans. It felt like a second skin.” The newest piece in the exhibition is a tuxedo look worn by Jerry Hall for the couturier’s final show.
Catroux, with her sharp platinum bob and tall, lithe figure, has been described as Saint Laurent’s female foil, both physically and spiritually. “It was love at first sight, physically,” she remembers of their first meeting at New Jimmy’s on the Boulevard du
Montparnasse. “He asked someone at his table to talk to me because he was shy, and he asked me to wear his collection. I laughed at him and refused. He never had someone refusing him anything!”
She describes her role in Saint Laurent’s world as “being there to make life fun and beautiful”, but she wasn’t paid.
It is Anthony Vaccarello, current creative director, who best sums up the power of the duo. “Nowadays, people are too afraid to be daring,” he observes. “An insidious puritanism is overshadowing everything, so that kind of lesson is more important as ever.”
‘He asked someone to talk to me because he was shy’