The day has everything to be auspicious. The blazing azure sky and burgeoning pink cherry blossoms forecast spring, albeit apprehensively. It’s the season at its chilliest yet prettiest and Laure has the windows open for the first time this year. I wait in the kitchen while she finishes a phone call in the bathroom. Her fiancé Aaron Young, a San Francisco artist who made his name in New York when one of his student works was bought by the MoMA, sits in a beat-up leather Eames chair in front of a massive book case. I’ve yet to discover the rest of the house but people seem tiny in this space – it’s devastatingly boundless and very Soho. Aaron’s location in the apartment suggests a television and a beer. It’s like his own personal man cave, a plaid, burly relic of what was once his manly pre-decorated enclave, but he’s not watching anything; maybe drawing or tying his shoes. He soon gets up and takes off “to an appointment” leaving Laure and I the reigns of his sprawling loft and all that glorious sunlight.
The Laure Heriard-Dubreuil I meet today is different from the frothy one I see at parties and events or read in her e-mails. She’s focused and serious and regards our shoot as a professional spin-off. Just this year she was featured in both Russian and French Vogue and Architectural Digest so it’s no surprise projects like these have become tick-the-box routine. Her wardrobe, tough partly stocked with coveted designer vintage dresses (she collects old YSL florals), is a clear reminder that Laure is a merchandiser at heart and a store owner by choice. The 80-square-foot space she calls her closet is a near-faithful clone of The Webster, the Miami store she opened six years ago because she “wanted to move back to the States and needed some sunshine.” It started with a trip to Art Basel – “I didn’t have “proper outfits” for the happenings, went shopping, couldn’t find anything… The Webster was born!” – and became a retail success story.
Laure grew up in Cognac, a region in the South West of France where her great-grandfather established Remy-Martin, an exclusive Fine Champagne Cognac brand that, according to google, sponsors everything from the Cannes Film Festival to Big Sean’s birthday bash in Beverly Hills. She went to high school and university in Paris, studied Mandarin for eight years – she reads Confucius! – moved to New York for two years, then back to Paris to work for Balenciaga and YSL as a merchandiser, then Miami and since one and a half year she occupies the Soho loft with Aaron. They decorated it together. And he proposed to her on his fortieth birthday.
“I used to give things to my sister,” she tells me when I ask her how she manages her wardrobe, “until I started working for Balenciaga and since then I haven’t edited much. I guess I’ll continue until my closet explodes or I’ll have to build a bigger one!!” Laure cultivates a style that’s partly “Lady who Lunches with a downtown vibe, and Bourgeois with a Rock ‘n Roll twist”. She shops vintage because they are “usually one-of-a-kind pieces. I can have my personal style without belonging to any trends. It is so unique and the construction and prints are so special and timeless!” Which, she declares, is the very reason she admires style icons like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Jackie O. “All of them were so so chic and so graceful,” she smiles. “They had their own very specific styles and knew how to put together looks for generations to follow!”
We spend the next couple of hours working out looks and locations. Laure is fast and decisive but appreciates my input. We’re on the same page when it comes to color and prints – she’s a gracious fan and dedicated connoisseur. She shows me a set of nail polishes designed by her friend Pierry Hardy for Nars and a few paintings that haven’t made it on the art-splashed walls yet. She tells me she would never wear Crocs but is guilty of buying shoes that are too small because “she can not live without them”. It’s part of a healthy shoe obsession that occupies the entire wall, floor-to-ceiling, of her walk-in closet. “I always end up not wearing them or maybe just once until my feet bleed and never again…” My battery dies just as I’m about to document proof of the towering shoe collection but I figure it’s best to leave some of Laure’s fashionable brilliance to the imagination. When I walk out of the building Aaron is jumping out of a taxi, smiling. Whatever mission he had, it was accomplished. Maybe he’ll have that beer now.
