Jacques de Bascher

Jacques de Bascher or Jacques "Bascher de Beaumarchais", born on July 8, 1951, in Saigon (French Indochina) and died on September 3, 1989, at Garches Hospital, was a Parisian dandy, a member of the French Jet set and Karl Lagerfeld's companion from 1971 until his death, as well as Yves Saint Laurent's lover in 1973.

Biography

Jacques de Bascher was a member of the de Bascher family, the son of Antony de Bascher, governor of the province of Cholon in Vietnam, and an executive of Shell's insurance department upon his return to France in 1955. de Bascher's mother, née Armelle Petit, is descended from a line of landowners in Limousin. Jacques de Bascher had two brothers and two sisters. He spent his childhood in a bourgeois Catholic family, between an apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine on boulevard Commandant-Charcot, which overlooks the Bois de Boulogne, and the castle Berrière near Nantes. He studied at the small high school Pasteur, then high school Janson de Sailly, and finally high school Charlemagne.

At the age of twenty, he did military service in the French Navy. "Multiplying the provocations", he served a month's imprisonment at the Arue camp in Tahiti, held by the Foreign Legion3.

Returning to Paris, he attended the faculty of Assas for a few months and became a steward for Air France in 1972, but it was especially the clubs in vogue that attracted him. According to Gilles Martin-Chauffier, for fifteen years, Jacques de Bascher "has evolved like a snake in the grass" between the gardens of the Tuileries, the five-stars, the Parisian backrooms, The Palace, the rue Sainte-Anne (The Seven), The Blue Hand in Montreuil, the castle of his family and the big festivals of the fashion world4. Thus, at the age of 21, he met Karl Lagerfeld at the Nuage and then at the Sept. A few months later, after Jacques de Bascher resigned from Air France, they went to live together until 1989, without ever sharing the same apartment, in a sentimental and non-physical relationship3,5. Karl Lagerfeld appreciated Bascher's vast literary culture, his impertinence, his aristocratic appearance and his manner of dressing.

In 1973, Yves Saint Laurent, at the time still the companion of Pierre Bergé, fell in love with Jacques de Bascher. While Karl Lagerfeld closed his eyes, Yves Saint Laurent and Jacques de Bascher had an unbalanced and destructive relationship. Pierre Bergé threatened Bascher, who put an end to this affair. At their break, there began a "descent into hell" for Yves Saint Laurent3.

During these years, Jacques de Bascher, who did not work (he was maintained by Karl Lagerfeld), multiplied bad company, fell into risky sexual practices and made reactionary remarks, while drugs and alcohol ended up accentuating a paranoid state3.

In 1984, Jacques de Bascher tested positive for HIV3.

He died of AIDS at Garches Hospital in 1989, watched over by Karl Lagerfeld, who had an extra bed installed at his bedside5. The following year, Karl Lagerfeld bought a house near Hamburg, which he named Villa Jako in his memory. In 1998, he launched a fragrance called Jako.

The funeral mass took place in the intimacy of the family in the chapel of the Père-Lachaise cemetery, then a second mass was celebrated in the chapel of Mée-sur-Seine, where Karl Lagerfeld then owned a property, in the presence of Mrs. de Bascher7, and friends, including his brief former fiancée, Diane de Beauvau-Craon. Kenzo did not have the heart to go there8.

"Drinking, taking drugs, making love and dressing well will have constituted the comic life of Jacques de Bascher, paragon until the caricature of the small world of Parisian arts and fashion of the 70s and 80s [...] , Proustian character, dilettante and deceitful, an emaciated look, a fine retro mustache, dressed like a Viscontian prince "9.

References

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