Edmonde Charles-Roux, Novelist and Editor of French Vogue, Dies at 95
|
Version 0 of 1. Edmonde Charles-Roux, a longtime editor of French Vogue and the author of the novel “To Forget Palermo,” winner of the Prix Goncourt, France’s biggest literary prize, in 1966, died on Wednesday in Marseille. She was 95. Her death was announced by the Académie Goncourt, where she had been a member since 1983 and president from 2002 to 2014. Ms. Charles-Roux, a decorated nurse and resistance fighter during World War II, found her way into fashion when she was hired in 1946 as a writer for a new women’s weekly, Elle. Two years later, she began writing for the French edition of Vogue, which installed her as editor in chief in 1954, replacing Michel de Brunhoff, brother of Jean de Brunhoff, the author of the Babar children’s books. She quickly put her stamp on the magazine, expanding its cultural coverage and showcasing the writers Alain Robbe-Grillet and Violette Leduc and the photographers Irving Penn and Guy Bourdin. She also promoted the careers of up-and-coming designers, notably Emanuel Ungaro and Yves Saint-Laurent. In 1966, she was ousted, for reasons that were never fully explained — either because she had lobbied to put a black model on the cover, devoted too many pages to cultural subjects or failed to keep up with changing styles. “They didn’t like the way I was,” she told The New York Times in 1981. “For me, fashion has never been frivolous.” She was succeeded by Françoise de Langlade, who in 1967 married the designer Oscar de la Renta. Ms. Charles-Roux landed on her feet. Four months after she left Vogue, “To Forget Palermo,” her first novel, won the Prix Goncourt. “When I was fired, I didn’t even know the book had been accepted for publication,” she told The Times in 1966. The novel told the story of an American career woman, the editor of the fictional fashion magazine Fair, who marries a tough New York politician. When they travel to Sicily to meet his family, he reverts to the patriarchal values of his ancestors, destroying the marriage. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly called the novel “not only a work of great literary beauty, but an eminently readable novel as well — two qualities that do not often concur in French prize novels.” Edmonde Charles-Roux was born on April 17, 1920, in the Paris suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. Her father, François, was a diplomat whose postings took the family from one international capital to another. She spent much of her early childhood in Prague and, after her father was named the French envoy to the Vatican, attended the Lycée Chateaubriand in Rome. Soon after the fall of France in World War II, her parents returned to their hometown, Marseille, where she earned a nursing diploma and volunteered to serve in an ambulance corps of the French Foreign Legion. At Verdun, she was wounded during an aerial bombardment of the field hospital where she was working but stayed at her post. After serving with the Resistance in Provence, she was wounded again when the First French Army, to which she was attached, advanced into Austria. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. After leaving Vogue and winning the Prix Goncourt, Ms. Charles-Roux wrote a celebrated biography of Coco Chanel, published in the United States in 1975 as “Chanel: Her Life, Her World — and the Woman Behind the Legend She Herself Created.” A photographic sequel, “Chanel and her World,” was published in 1981. Ms. Charles-Roux unearthed a wealth of information about Chanel’s early life in the demimonde of Paris. Her subject, who had thrown a veil of secrecy over her background, was not, to put it mildly, cooperative. On being informed that a biography was in the works, “Chanel’s famous nostrils flared,” Ms. Charles-Roux told The Times. “She blew smoke. She would not supply information or photographs. I knew I would have to do it on my own. She would never talk to me again.” Ms. Charles-Roux also wrote a two-volume biography of the Swiss explorer and writer Isabelle Eberhardt and a second novel, “She, Adrienne,” about a fashion designer and resistance fighter who mesmerizes two men. In 1966, Gaston Defferre, the Socialist mayor of Marseille and later an interior minister under President François Mitterrand, presented Ms. Charles-Roux with a medal in honor of her Goncourt triumph. The two fell in love and married in 1973. He died in 1986. She leaves no immediate survivors. |