It was a warm and fun way of country life. “Like any couple, they fought—I thought it was funny the idea that they even fought,” says Jane Holzer, their friend and collector. He was more reserved and kind and enjoyed telling jokes, while she was more direct, a bon vivant. “They were just them, they worked all day, they ate well,” Holzer says. Everyone who talks about spending time at the Lalanne home mentions the food: fraises des bois that Claude loved, good cheese, sausage, lots of wine. “Claude, she could drink a guy under the table,” adds Holzer. “One night we started out with vodka, and I honestly don’t know how many she had. And then a few bottles of very good red wine and she was not even drunk, and I think she was 92 years old. I mean, that’s my girl, come on. I would swallow three glasses of wine and be under the table!” Stories of their drinking prowess abound. “They were both chitty-chatty, great company, and they thought nothing of downing two bottles of wine. I was like, just a minute, I gotta crawl home,” says Marino.
The country-house visits were a way to sell things. Or gift things. “I would go and see them and see something beautiful and just fall in love and ask permission. I was very polite. Maybe that’s the problem,” says Holzer, who got a fuzzy sheep that way. If you were particularly lucky, you got a piece customized while you visited. Claude had a series called Pomme Bouche, of an apple with a cast of a model’s mouth. Reed Krakoff and his wife, Delphine, sat for one. As did Marino, but with a more disastrous result. “She did all of the most famous women in Paris, London, and New York and said, ‘I’d love to do your lips,’ ” he says. “She put Vaseline on my lips with her spatula and hot wax. She said, ‘This is so awkward, but I’ve never done it with someone who has a beard.’ It took two hours of steaming water, and I had wax in my mustache for three weeks.” He thinks it’s the ugliest one she made; he still has it on his dining table.
