An It Girl to the last!

Ah, how often we forget that we didn’t invent the ‘it’ girl. Maxime de La Falaise who has died at age 87 was an “it” girl 1950s. Even the name oozes cool (actually she was born plain old Maxine Birley – give this girl credit for reinvention).

She was Cecil Beaton's muse – the star photographer of his day. He called her the “only truly chic Englishwoman” of her generation.

She was a model, a food writer and stared in an Andy Warhol film. She was born in London but lived in Paris and New York. She designed exquisite clothes, furniture, rugs and bags.

She had wonderful affairs, often with ‘playboys’ as they called the idle rich in the 1940s and 1950s. She also had serious romances -with Louis Malle and the surrealist painter Max Ernst and later, John Paul Getty III. She was married to John McKendry, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And of course she was the mother of the exquisite model Loulou de la Falaise who was an “it” girl of the 1980’s.

Vale Maxime! What a wonderful life!
Maxime De La Falaise, 1922-2009

------------------------