The Saint Laurent Muse by C.W. Gortner

 The Saint Laurent Muse brings to life the Paris of the 70s with the greatest names in fashion, their rivalry, nightlife, glamour and vanity.

Loulou de la Falaise comes from aristocratic family. Her childhood wasn’t nurturing. It involved divorced parents, foster families, boarding schools, and unloving grandparents. It led her into unhappy marriage at young age, followed shortly by divorce. But there was one crucial lesson which her mother, Maxime, instilled in her that it was important to create one’s existence. Her mother always looked forward, never backwards, and understood that the key to happiness was to find something you love to do. For Maxime, it was fashion collections in Paris where she also took Loulou who was mesmerized by the clothes.

Loulou’s career path takes her from assisting at in-store fashion shows in Europe to some odd fashion jobs in NYC. While visiting a friend in Paris, she is invited to a Saint Laurent couture fashion show. And that’s when everything changes for her. She gets involved in designing with Yves and also becomes his muse. The fashion world becomes her family which she never experienced as a child.

The friendship between Loulou and Yves reveals all the glamour and excesses of high society, the decadent parties and underworld nightclubs. The professional rivalry between Yves and Lagerfeld leads to division and tensions among friends, which further leads to deception.

The Saint Laurent Muse exposes how in fashion boundaries of propriety are pushed to the brim and scandals. It reveals the time when haute couture was being rivaled by new trend of lucrative world of ready-to-wear clothes. Tumultuous time is vividly exposed with all the rivalry and tensions among fashion designers and personal friendships. The narrative and richly imagined interactions are authentic.

The story involves more of overindulgences rather than fashion designing itself, not shying away from graphic descriptions. Nevertheless, the subject is portrayed by a very talented writer who chose to tackle this challenging subject.

Released in March 2025

Source: William Morrow Books