Inès de La Fressange

Family and Childhood

La Fressange was born in Gassin, Var, France, the daughter of André de Seignard, Marquis de La Fressange (b. 1932), a French stockbroker, and his wife, the former Cecilia "Lita" Sánchez-Cirez, an Argentine model (closely related to the two presidents of the Republic of Colombia, Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo and Alfonso Lopez Michelsen).

Her family on her father's side comes from old French nobility, and had the seigneury of 'de La Fressange' in the Velay (in Auvergne). Her uncle, Hubert de La Fressange (b. 1923), died in the Second World War on 2 October 1944 in Anglemont, during which he participated in its liberation. Her grandmother, the marchioness to Paul de La Fressange, was born Simone Lazard, and was heiress to the Lazard banking fortune (Banque Lazard). She married two ministers in succession, Maurice Petsche then Louis Jacquinot.

She grew up in an 18th-century mill outside Paris with two brothers, Emmanuel, the eldest, and her younger brother, Ivan. She studied at the Tournelle Institution in Courgent, then at the Notre-dame de Mantes-la-Jolie Institution in the Yvelines where she got her bacalaureat at the age of 16, and then went to the L'École du Louvre in Paris.

Career

Tall at 180 cm (5'11") and with a weight of 50 kg (110 lb), she began her career as a model in 1974 at the age of 17. She quickly became nicknamed by many as "the talking mannequin", due to her tendency to talk with fashion journalists and express her opinions on her profession and on fashion.

In 1975 at the age of 18, La Fressange appeared for the first time in photos by Oliviero Toscani for Elle magazine, then modelled for Thierry Mugler and other designers.

In 1983 she became the first model to sign an exclusive modeling contract with the haute couture fashion house, Chanel, by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, whose muse she became due to her remarkable resemblance to the brand's founder, Coco Chanel, who died in 1971. She was the first model to sign an exclusivity contract with a fashion house and the first model to become a big media personality and popular figure in fashion history, a symbol of the 1980s due to her omnipresence.

However, in 1989, Lagerfeld and La Fressange had an argument and parted company. Likely this argument was, at least in part, regarding her decision to lend her likeness to a bust of Marianne, the ubiquitous symbol of the French Republic. Lagerfeld reputedly condemned her decision, saying that Marianne was the embodiment of "everything that is boring, bourgeois, and provincial" and that he would not dress up historic monuments.

On 9 June 1990, in Tarascon, France, she married Luigi d'Urso (1951-2006), an Italian railroad executive, who died in 2006. Luigi was the son of Alessandro d'Urso, and his wife, Donna Clothilde Serra di Cassano (daughter of Don Luigi Serra, 9th Duke di Cassano, and Elizabeth Grant; and great-granddaughter of George Clymer, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed both the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the United States Constitution in 1787). Luigi and Inès had two daughters, Nine Marie d'Urso (born 1994) and Violette Marie d'Urso (born 1999). She also has two stepdaughters, Clotilde d'Urso and India d'Urso, the daughters of Luigi d'Urso by his first wife, Guendalina Levier.

She walked the runway for Gaultier during an event, at age 51. She also walked the Chanel spring-summer 2011 show.

La Fressange and fashion journalist Sophie Gachet are the authors of Parisian Chic, a Style Guide.