Francois and Betty Catroux were the ultimate tastemakers and style influencers, the It couple of the fashion and design worlds of Paris from the 1970s to the 1990s. Betty was the best friend, model, and muse of Yves Saint Laurent, almost to an obsessive degree; almost inseparable, they dined at the chicest restaurants, partied at the most exclusive Paris nightclubs and discotheques, and vacationed in the south of France and Morocco. In 2020, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum dedicated an entire exhibit to Betty Catroux, who donated over 300 pieces of her private collection of Yves Saint Laurent garments and accessories to the museum. (CLICK HERE to read my blog article about the exhibit.)
Betty married Francois Catroux in 1967. Francois went on to become one of the top interior designers in the world, designing houses, palaces, chateaux, apartments, and yachts for kings, queens, movie stars, business moguls, and fashion designers around the globe. Born in 1937 to a privileged, bourgeois family, Catroux’s father was a general under Charles DeGaulle and his mother, a Spanish heiress. He didn’t study design in school or have any formal training as a designer but had a great eye and his first design job was for an Italian fashion designer. He was the complete package: handsome, charming, and debonair with jet black hair, big brown eyes, and skin that seemed to be always tanned. Francois died in 2020 at the age of 83.
Tomorrow, February 24, Sotheby’s France is having an auction of the contents of Palais Maeterlinck, a chateau in the south of France that the Catroux’s owned, and one of Francois’s last design projects. I went yesterday to see the preview before the auction. Although the collection is mostly contemporary furniture and objets, there’s an eclectic range and a few surprises thrown in the mix. Some of the highlights of the 119 lots up for auction include pieces by Ron Arad, Ettore Sottsass, and Vladimir Kagan, and art pieces by Tom Wesselmann, Antonio Zoran Music, Martin d’Orgeval, Josef Albers, and sculptures by Lucio Fontana.
Sotheby’s France
76 rue Faubourg Saint Honoré, 75008
Betty and Francois- so chic!
Javier Mariscal
Emmanuel Gondouin
Indonesian chair
Table Ron Arad-1990-1994, lamp Mauro Fabbro, art piece Luis Tomasello
Ron Arad-1988
Table by Francois Catroux. Painting Black and Blue (Violet)II by James Brown
Painting by Tom Wesselmann, sculpture- France, 20th century, from a model by Pierre Lartigue (1745-1826), lamp- Mauro Fabbro-2009
Couch by Vladimir Kagan- 1950, star lamp by Tom Dixon, Noguchi coffee table
Chairs by Ron Arad -1992, Painting by Jean-Marc Bustamante
Chinese lacquered screen, Qing dynasty 1662-1722, chair and ottoman Jay Henderson 1970
Ettore Sottsass
French chairs
French armchairs
Victor Vasarely
Painting-Tho, sculpted stone faces from the Bayon Temple, Cambodia-1950
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