Inès Marie Lætitia Églantine Isabelle de Seignard de La Fressange (born 11 August 1957), is a French model,[1] aristocrat and designer of fashion and perfumes. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1998.[2]
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 Sánchez Cirez, an Argentine model. She grew up in an 18th-century mill outside Paris with two brothers, Emmanuel and Yvan. Her paternal grandmother was Suzanne Lazard (Marquise de La Fressange, Madame Louis Jacquinot, Madame Maurice Petsche), an heiress to the Lazard banking fortune.
Tall at 180 cm (5'11") and with a weight of 50 kg (110 lb), in the 1980s, she became the first model to sign an exclusive modeling contract with an haute couture fashion house, Chanel, by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, whose muse she became.[1] However, in 1989, Lagerfeld and De 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.[3]
On 9 June 1990, in Tarascon, France, she married Luigi d'Urso, an Italian railroad executive, who died in 2006.[4][5] They had two daughters, Nine Marie d'Urso (born 1994) and Violette Marie d'Urso (born 1999).[1] She also has two stepdaughters, Clotilde d'Urso and India d'Urso, the daughters of Luigi d'Urso by his first wife, Guendalina Levier.
As of 2009, La Fressange does not model often. She has been a businesswoman with a chain of clothing boutiques, a designer, and a consultant for Jean-Paul Gaultier. She presented a creation by Gaultier for his Spring/Summer 2009 haute couture collection at the Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week and walked the runway for Gaultier during the event, at age 51.[1] Also, she walked the Chanel spring-summer 2011 show.
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