 |
| Book scan: Architectural Digest - International Interiors, 1979 / Interior Decorator Francois Catroux |
Francois Catroux arrived on the Paris scene in the middle of the 1960's, when he settled after years of constant traveling. One day a friend droped in with an Italien lady. As she left she asked him if he would like to decorate her place. The lady was Mila Schoen, and the project was an enormous susses. Thus launched internationally and Mr Catroux soon had projects all over the world.
 |
| Book scan: Architectural Digest - International Interiors, 1979 / Interior Decorator Francois Catroux |
"I would never go out to buy two night tables for the bedroom. Never! It is space that interests me, masses that seem to melt together, the use of screens, different levels,different qualities of transparency. These are the effects I like. And I really detest furniture."
 |
| Book scan: Architectural Digest - International Interiors, 1979 / Interior Decorator Francois Catroux |
"Coming to me is a little like going to Cartier..."
His concern for quality shows also in his own apartment. Even at the beginning, because of precarious finances, he used inexpensive modern materials, but the basics were done in the best way possible. As a consequense the decor for his apartment can be arranged as convenient as a stage set. "Al, the screens are mounted magnetically and can be lifted right off."
Betty Catroux is instantly recognizable: lean, platinum-haired, the ultimate androgyne, she has a leggy tomboy style that was a visual philter to Yves Saint Laurent, whom she met in a nightclub, and to whom she was more than a muse. As her husband, François Catroux, said: “She was for Yves like a drawing. She was a pencil stroke that was his pencil stroke. She is what he would have dreamed of being himself, I guess.”
The late, great designer’s symbiotic relationship with Betty dates to 1967, the year she first came to Vogue’s attention as “one of the hippiest, most attractive "Left Bank boutique girls".
The attraction between the two friends was not only aesthetic, but intellectual:
They shared an escapist mentality. “We had a passion for the Rolling Stones; we adored all that was louche. We loved the night, the excesses,” said Catroux, who is rumored to have gone into rehab with Saint Laurent, in the late seventies. They also shared a
French bourgeois mindset, which made their exploratory strolls on the wild side especially dangerous: There was always the Right Bank to return to. As Catroux told later, “We liked the hippie mentality, but since we loved luxury their lifestyle was not for us! It just meant more freedom and rebellion.”
