Crazy Ines!

Everything, with her, revolves around page 21 of the Bescherelle, verb of the first group, conjugation at all times, all modes of the verb “to love”. She was 18 when she appeared for the first time in the women's press in front of Oliviero Toscani's lens. She will be 55 this summer, a composite past made up of supermodels. In the eyes of the world, she embodies the Parisienne, she is as well known as the Eiffel Tower. Today, the world muse of L'Oréal Paris, she trots and gallops like a businesswoman, ambassador for the shoemaker Roger Vivier. Do we still need to introduce you to Ines de la Fressange?

His life read and reads like a photo novel, over the magazines and the years. She hid nothing of her winter days. We know the difficulty she had in having children, the death in 2006 of the art dealer Luigi D'Urso, the father of her two daughters, Nine and Violette. We know of his support for Francine Leca, who heads the children's cardiac surgery department at the Necker hospital and the association Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque. We also know everything about the palette of his summer impressions: his daughters, his lover Denis Olivennes, president of the information center of the Lagardère group, the blended family, the Moorish vacationers, his stronghold of Tarascon. All of this, we know.

Inject cheerfulness everywhere

What interests us is the nature that led to his career and above all the essence that shaped his existence. Behind her armor of false casualness, she will tell you: “Caring too much about your image mummifies. The least of elegance is never to feel sorry for yourself. I'm like a kid who persists in coloring by going beyond the outlines. His fake forehand is his eternal little smirk. His Nevers boot, his amused gaze and his obsession with wanting to oxygenate what makes up the fabric of his daily life, to inject cheerfulness everywhere.

If a question bothers her, she rubs her earlobe, her licorice gaze shifts to the side, her shyness is the hard stop on which she quickly tends to crash. She practices humor like a stretching gymnast. She has a sense of the other, observes first, her first impressions and her instinct are her mute accomplices to conquer any audience.

Elegance, for her, can be that of a gesture, a word, a garment, a behavior. She will say to qualify things "It's amazing, breathtaking, funny" or "It's boring and it shaves me". She often speaks as Sagan wrote, uses the verb “s'esbigner”, the word “rastaquouère” to define her origins, her mixed blood, the musicality of the words pleases her.

She knew gold before sequins. His mother, Lita Sanchez Cirez, is Argentinian, long hair, perfect body, model at Guy Laroche.

His father, grandson of the banker André Lazard, is “a kind of James Dean, whimsical and mathematician, broker by trade”. Number two out of three children, Ines de la Fressange was born in Gassin, nine months after her brother Emmanuel, twelve years before the youngest, Ivan. The eldest live with their Polish nanny, Toya, in an apartment in the sixteenth district of Paris, above that where their parents live, before moving into a mill near Mantes-la-Jolie. “I rubbed shoulders with my parents, but without bitterness, I don't remember having had a meal with them. She offers Mother's Day gifts to her Toya, whom she describes as "maternal, capable of all surprises".

The paternal grandmother plays a key role in her education, she secures her, introduces her to fashion and the charm of fantasy. “As a child, I was shy, obedient and shy. My brother was hilarious, I realized that by making people laugh I was better. Ines de la Fressange did not dream of being a model, even less a top model. She first plans to become a child psychiatrist, then a lawyer, then a sculptor, then a painter. “I made collages, drawings, my mother had decreed that my talent was there. Her father wanted to make her a perfection. “In the family, you had to be brilliant or nothing. His first sketching lessons were given to him by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. She enrolled at the Ecole du Louvre after her baccalaureate. “I didn't dare ask the parents for money, they had financial worries. I had often been told that I would be a model. This profession was, in my eyes, synonymous with frivolity and lightness. I liked the clothes and the make-up, but I never wanted to admit that I was frivolous. Today, I accept it. »

A lanky aristo-gavroche style

She tumbled into the profession with legs so long that it was necessary to invent the Millau viaduct to go beyond them. From her gait like the zigzag stitching of a machine, she made an instantly recognizable style. His mischievousness, his dull side of the parades and his tchatche dynamited the Jansenist codes of the know-how of the catwalks, eclipsing in passing the stereotypical blondness of his companions fixing the horizon. “I had a green bean side laid on a white sheet, no ambition, a lot of derision. My difference, my lack of professionalism, my accidents, it was the others who decided to make them qualities, it allowed me to dare. »

His lanky aristo-gavroche style, which did not subjugate at its beginnings, was spotted and offered to young designers thanks to Jean-Jacques Picart. In her, the fashion consultant saw the Parisienne. Precisely, thirty years later, the guide entitled La Parisienne (at Flammarion), which Ines signed in 2010 with Sophie Gachet, has the flavor of the sales of rolls: more than 500,000 copies, translated in twelve countries. At the time of our grandmothers, there was the much less funny I know how to cook, by Ginette Mathiot.

The first designer to recruit her in 1975 was Kenzo, the first fashion show was for Thierry Mugler. His first agency was Pauline, the second Marilyn. “I was sent to the United States in the early 80s. American Vogue chose me for a session, these photos were a springboard. A year later, Paolo Roversi chose her for a cosmetics campaign. From a model, Ines de la Fressange rose to the rank of supermodel.

Thirty-five parades per season, prohibitive prices, birth of the great Ines. “I conveyed an image of a clown on the catwalks, sometimes unwittingly. A game was built between the wall of flashes and my character, everything depended on the mood of the room and the complicity with the creator.

As in Tintin, there was Ines at Gaultier, Ines at Ungaro, Ines at Hermès..., then Ines and Karl Lagerfeld, an exclusive Chanel contract in 1983. “My craft was a product of Karl's imagination and we built it every day. With him, I also learned that it was always necessary to remain in the lightness, to avoid interpretations, not to reveal anything. One of the clauses of the Chanel contract stipulated its termination in the event of turpitude. And there were turpitudes when, on the eve of the Bicentenary of the Revolution, Ines was elected Marianne by the mayors of France. Karl Lagerfeld was against, Ines for. Beginning of the disenchantment, falling out... the bickering is now forgotten.

The success of a fighter

She bounced back and created her ready-to-wear label, Ines de la Fressange, in 1991. Success was immediate in France, on the American and Japanese markets.

The adventure turns to tragedy eight years later. Pregnant with her second daughter, Ines de la Fressange was fired from her own company for having signed the illustration of a promotional pillbox for Abbé Soury. She legally loses the use of her surname. Legal battle...

Her return to the podiums occurred in 2001. Since then, we haven't stopped seeing her. The list is long. Let's mention Gaultier in 2009, Chanel for couture in 2010 and the ready-to-wear campaign in the same year. Since 2003, Ines de la Fressange has been with Roger Vivier, owned by the Italian Diego Della Valle. She now works as a consultant on all of the group's brands, including Tod's, Hogan and, more recently, on the relaunch of the iconic Elsa Schiaparelli brand.

Ultra-solicited outside, she also manages her own company. Remember page 21 of Bescherelle, and this verb above all that this dunce of the podiums, this top who did not want to be a model, applies to conjugate in the feminine of all fashions..., of all fashions.

Ines' beauty secrets

Miss Figaro. - Do you have a secret for staying in shape? Ines de la Fressange. - Laughing with my girlfriends.

Your favorite sport? Shopping.

The gym move you do on your own? Run my hands through my hair 700 times a day.

A coach at home or indoors? I went twice to the swimming pool at the Costes hotel, I swam for half an hour, and then I fell asleep, exhausted, I missed a meeting. So, I found more energetic: a boxing gym and a pair of gloves with Rudy, my trainer. It's the only fun sport.

A resolution at the start of the school year? Keep in mind the beautiful images stored during the summer for as long as possible.

Do you have food tics? Apart from snacking like yesterday on a packet of chocolate Gavottes, without offering any to those around me, no.

Are you a good cook? Yes, but it shaves me. I cook once or twice a year; therefore, I have the reputation of not knowing how to cook.

A culinary specialty? Chicken for everything. After having it cut by your butcher, you simmer it in a casserole dish with what you have in your cupboards while you go to do your look. Of course, you don't have to wear anything, so the better the chicken... It must be simmering. You serve it very late, your guests are starving, you have offered them a good little wine to wait, and finally at the table, for you, it's an absolute triumph.

Willingness to resist? None when it comes to pastillas, sweets in the shape of a host with powder inside, Frigor milk chocolates.

Your trick to losing 3 kilos? Stop snacking, take the time to have lunch, dinner. Drink grapefruit juice, favor the consumption of pineapple. Learn to chew instead of gulping down your meal in a hurry.

Your perfume for the summer? The Roger Vivier line of perfumes and, in particular, Néroli.

The treatment that makes you feel good? Luckily, I'm advertising Revitalift by L'Oréal, and it's a great product.

The color you need? Blue, because it goes well with the complexion, and all pinks.

With or without sun? L'Oréal's Sublime Bronze healthy-glow treatment is an accomplice to gray mornings.