AND NOW THIS!!!

YSL DEAD AT 71.....

Yves Saint Laurent died Sunday at age 71 after a long illness. He had battled mental illness and drug addiction throughout his life.

The fashion giant was one of the most famous designers of the last century, along with Coco Chanel, Christian Dior and Paul Poiret.

Although he retired from haute couture in 2002, after 40 years of designing, YSL continues to dominate, and his clothing is still worn by trend-setting actresses and valued by fashion collectors.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF KATOUCHA 1960-2008

I LOVE YOU KATOUCHA. GOD BLESS YOUR SOUL MY QUEEN. VOUS ÊTES À MON COEUR TOUJOURS


Katoucha Niane (30 December 1960 in Conakry, Guinea – 2 February 2008 in Paris, France) was a French supermodel—one of the world's first to have come from Africa. Nicknamed "The Peul Princess" (in reference to her ethnic Fula background), she worked, and later wrote, under the single name "Katoucha". She was the daughter of author, playwright and historian Djibril Tamsir Niane. She had three children.


As a child, Katoucha's family was forced into exile after her father came into conflict with Guinean President Sekou Toure. Living with an uncle in Mali, she rejoined her family in Dakar at age twelve. There she lived with the family of her paternal uncle, whose wife was private secretary to President of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor.[1] After marrying her husband at age seventeen and giving birth to her first child, they emigrated to France.
It was there, in the 1980s, that she began modelling first for Thierry Mugler, then Paco Rabanne and Christian Lacroix, and became known as Yves Saint Laurent's "muse."[2] She remained one of the best known models in France, and an icon in Guinea. Recently she worked as host of the French language television program Top Model.

Niane stopped modeling in 1994 to focus on activism. She had been an outspoken activist against female circumcision, a rite performed in some African nations. Following her success as a model, she started the organization KPLCE - Katoucha pour la lutte contre l’excision (English: Katoucha for the battle against female circumcision). Niane herself was circumcised at age 9. In 2007, she published a book about her personal circumcision experience, "Dans ma chair" (Eng: "In My Flesh"), in France.

Katoucha lived in a houseboat on the Seine, near the Alexander III bridge in Paris. On February 1, 2008, she returned to her houseboat from a party. This was the last time she was reportedly seen alive. On February 4, 2008, police opened a missing persons case for her. Her purse was found untouched outside the door to her boat. Police believed that no foul play was involved, and that she was likely intoxicated and fell into the Seine.[3]
Her body was found in the Seine River on February 28, 2008. The 47 year old model is believed to have died from an accidental drowning.


SHE WAS ALSO MY DEAR FRIEND. I will cherish her memory forever....

KATOUCHA HAS GONE MISSING!!!

If you have heard or know anything, please contact the French Authorities.


Here's what the French media has written: Paris police seek missing model, former Saint Laurent muse
PARIS (AFP) — French police were searching Friday for a Guinean former catwalk model, one time muse of the couture giant Yves Saint Laurent, a week after she vanished from her Paris houseboat.
Nicknamed the "black princess", the 47-year-old Katoucha went missing from her home on a central stretch of the River Seine Friday night, according to relatives who reported her missing on Monday.
The mother-of-three disappeared after being dropped off near her home from a party and her handbag was later recovered nearby.
Investigators are exploring all lines of inquiry, including a fatal accident or suicide, and divers trawled the Seine in vain for her body this week.
Born in Conakry, Katoucha worked with the greatest couture stars at the height of her career in the 1980s including Saint Laurent who "loved her enormously", according to Dominique Deroche, head of PR for the designer.
"She was exactly like an Yves Saint Laurent drawing, a proud head on a long neck, very slim but with strong shoulders, made for haute couture."
"She looked magnificent on the catwalk and often wore very powerful outfits -- like a cubist navy blue dress with doves around the neckline."
Katoucha left the catwalk for good in 1994, but in recent years she made headlines as an outspoken campaigner against female circumcision, launching a foundation against the practice.
"Today at the age of 47, I want a woman's combat and I have chosen the battle against excision," she said in a recent interview.
Excised at the age of nine, in her home country Guinea, Katoucha recounted the ordeal in a recent book entitled "In My Flesh".
The daughter of the writer and historian Djibril Tamsir Niane, Katoucha spent an idyllic childhood in Conakry.
"I grew up surrounded byu hibiscus and ylang-ylang flowers. I used to get drunk on the richest perfumes and saw myself as a perfumer or a model," she wrote in the book.
But then her life changed forever.
"We lived in Conakry, life was sweet, then one day mother said we were going to the cinema. And I found myself the victim of a horror movie.
"An unimaginable trauma, that I had never managed to talk about, until I found love and wrote 'In my flesh'," she said.
She said she saw her career as a top model, first with the designer Thierry Mugler, as a form of "revenge" for the horror of excision.
"I embodied the most arrogant and admired kind of feminity, I who was supposed to be diminished."






GOD BLESS HER SOUL
Lono Brazil~