Maxime Le Bailly, comtesse de La Falaise (25 June 1922 – 30 April 2009),[1][2] was an English-Irish 1950s model,[3] and, in the 1960s, an underground movie actress.[4] She was also a cookery writer and "food maven"[5] as well as a fashion designer for Blousecraft, Chloé and Gérard Pipart.[6] In her later years she pursued a career as a furniture and interior designer.[7]
She was born 22 June 1922 in West Dean, West Sussex, England as Maxine Birley[8] into a family of successful artists, businesspeople and academics. She grew up in Hampstead, and later at Charleston Manor, East Sussex. Her father, Sir Oswald Birley (1880–1952), was a celebrated portrait painter known for his portraits of royalty and others.[9][10] Her mother was Rhoda Vava Mary Lecky Pike, of County Carlow, a gardener and successful artist. Maxine's brother, Mark Birley (1930–2007), became an entrepreneur known for his investments in the hospitality industry.[11]
She changed her first name to Maxime after her first marriage, to French aristocrat Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise, in 1946.[12][13] She was known as Maxime de La Falaise McKendry, for a while, after her second marriage to John McKendry, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum.[4][14]
In the 1950s, Maxime de La Falaise worked for Elsa Schiaparelli as a vendeuse mondaine which she explained as "a sort of muse who was supposed to encourage sales to the rich English".[15] She modelled for photographers such as Jack Robinson and Cecil Beaton.[16]
While living in New York Maxime de La Falaise wrote a food column for Vogue magazine.[12] In 1980, she published a collection of these columns, with her own illustrations, under the title Food in Vogue. In 1973 she published Seven Centuries of English Cooking: A Collection of Recipes.[12] She also wrote the forewordtoMy Kingdom of Books (1999) by Richard Booth.[18]
Andy Warhol envisioned Maxime de La Falaise as part of Andy Warhol's Nothing Serious, his 1971 video project designed for television.[14] Warhol included her along with such personalities as Candy Darling and Brigid Berlin in his 1973 black-and-white video Phoney (later incorporated into the 1991 Andy Warhol's Video & Television Retrospective).[14]
She also appeared in the 1974 film Blood for Dracula (not made by Warhol despite being titled Andy Warhol's Dracula in the US and West Germany).[12]
According to the New York Times in 1977, Warhol had La Falaise design a menu for Andymat, Warhol's version of the automat, which included onion tarts, shepherds' pie, fish cakes, Irish lamb stew, key lime pie and a "nursery cocktail" of milk on the rocks. Her association with Warhol was such that one source called her "The Factory mother."[19]
On 18 July 1946, Maxime Birley became the second wife of Count (comte) Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise, (1905—1977) and was thus styled Countess (comtesse) Maxime de La Falaise.[1] They divorced in 1950, following a series of her infidelities, including an affair with British ambassador Duff Cooper.[20] They had two children:
Alexis Richard Dion Oswald Le Bailly de La Falaise, (1948-2004) was a furniture designer who also appeared in the Warhol film Tub Girls. Alexis' had two children: Daniel de La Falaise, is a chef, food writer, and photographer, and is married to Molly Malone; and Lucie de La Falaise, is a model, and is married to Marlon Richards, son of Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg.
^ abWhite, B. (23 June 2015). "Who's That Girl: Ella Richards". UK Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 August 2019. 1955 photo titled "Countess Maxima de la Falaise"
^"Biography of Oswald Birley". Archived from the original on 24 August 2004. Retrieved 15 September 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
