Loulou de la Falaise

Last year, for the 2011 International Garden Festival at Chaumont, the designer Loulou de la Falaise created the Jewel Garden. Very sadly, she died in November of that year, and as a tribute to her 'charm, elegance and unbounded imagination' the festival has decided to make her garden permanent.

She was one of those wonderful people who, despite a thoroughly rackety upbringing, turn out to be free and generous of spirit, hard working, endlessly creative and completely inspirational. Personally, I am very sorry never to have met her (she was briefly married to a friend of a friend, so it is not unthinkable that I might have run into her at a party in London).

Le jardin bijou.

For most of her working life she designed jewellery and accessories for her great friend Yves Saint-Laurent. She was enormously influential in creating the look of the 1970s, with her flair for combining old and new, haute couture with opshop* chic and always in bright cheerful colours (black was only for when you were miserable) combined with chunky clanking jewellery.

The garden at Chaumont is a nice memorial to someone who was a 'compulsive' gardener.

Susan

* an opshop (opportunity shop) is what Australians call a charity shop.