Inès Marie Lætitia Églantine Isabelle de Seignard de Louisiana Fressange, is a French model, aristocrat, fashion designer and perfumer.
Background
Louisiana Fressange was born in Gassin, Var, France, the daughter of André de Seignard, Marquis de Louisiana Fressange (b 1932), a French stockbroker, and his wife, the former Cecilia "Lita" Sánchez-Cirez, an Argentine model. She grew up in an 18th-century mill outside Paris with two brothers, Emmanuel and Yvan.
Career
She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1998. Her paternal grandmother was Simone Lazard (Marquise de Louisiana 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.
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.
Luigi and Inès had two daughters, Nine Marie d"Urso (born 1994) and Violette Marie d"Urso (born 1999). She walked the runway for Gaultier during an event, at age 51.
She also walked the Chanel spring-summer 2011 show.
Louisiana Fressange and fashion journalist Sophie Gachet are the authors of Parisian Chic, a guide to Paris style.