He Said She Said

"Good fashion is knowing how to see yourself in the mirror; bad fashion is not seeing yourself at all in the mirror." Marie-Louise Bousquet (1887-1975)

Marie-Louise Bousquet was the bewigged Paris editor of Harper's Bazaar, and a hostess of one of mid-20th-century Paris's leading salons. Remembered as a tiny, wizened lady, she was endlessly gossipy and heavily made-up. Mrs Bousquet was also forever feuding with another octogenarian, Coco Chanel, who on the record referred to her as possessing 'the face of a monkey, the mouth of a sewer'. Isn't she lovely?Marie-Louise Bousquet sitting next to Carmel Snow at an Elsa Schiaparelli show in Paris, in February 1951. Photographer: Nat Farbman for Life

James Brady: "...Mrs Bousquet, who had the trembles, was the most picturesque of all (editors). During the Dior collection, Bazaar editor Nancy White stationed a gorgeous younger fashion editor named China Machado to keep the chain-smoking Marie-Louise from setting herself aflame. As the models pranced by, she fumbled a lighted cigarette down the bodice of her dress. Instantly, China was on her feet, beating at Marie-Louise's minimal bosom, trying to extinguish the smoldering as the old lady protested, "Au secours! Au secours! (To the rescue!) She molests me!""