PARIS — On this particular day, there’s a strange bustle around the Notre-Dame de Compassion church in Paris’ 17th arrondissement.
At first glance, there’s nothing extraordinary about this little chapel, lost in a kind of no-man’s-land between the capital and the western suburb of Neuilly. Its facade is blackened by exhaust fumes from the cars that pass along the boulevard Périphérique just below. And inside the chapel, there is scan sign of aesthetic ecstasy.
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And yet there is a real treasure hidden inside, known only to a select few, who have gathered on this gray Saturday in December to witness the miracle: Once a year, the Virgin Mary appears head-to-toe in Yves Saint Laurent, dressed in brocade fabric and a gold-embroidered veil.
For 35 years, these devotees have helped adorn her in the delicate trousseau created by the late French fashion designer. There’s the parish priest, Christian Lancrey-Javal, and a few faithful parishioners, but also writers, fashion specialists and auctioneers.
Dressers delicately remove from a box the garments that will adorn the articulated mannequin, then place on its head a tall crown, a sprig of coral, pearls and shells in multicolored stones, the work of jeweler Goossens, who worked for Yves Saint Laurent for many years.
“Hail Mary,” Olé!
When the adorned Virgin finally reveals herself, a starry halo settles around the saint’s face, lighting up her shy smile as if by magic. Everyone then recites a respectful “Hail Mary,” ending with a resounding and incongruous “olé” from the priest, clapping his hands like a Spanish dancer.
The story of Notre-Dame de Compassion’s Virgin of El Rocío is a strange and beautiful one. It began in 1984. At the end of the traditional Sunday mass, a man approaches the priest to shake his hand at the end of the service. It is Henri d’Orléans, count of Paris. Here, he is in “his” church.
This chapel was built on the exact spot where his illustrious ancestor, the Duke d’Orléans, son of King Louis Philippe, suffered a fatal carriage accident. Since then, the chapel has been moved a few meters above boulevard Périphérique (the ring road that encircles Paris) to accommodate the construction of a high-rise hotel. Nevertheless, the Count and Countess of Paris still have their pew here.
The parish priest of the time went to Seville to collect the divine face.
The Count then made a special request to the priest: he wanted to see in the chapel a replica of the statue of the Virgin of El Rocío that his grandmother venerated, Our Lady of the Dew.
Legend has it that the Virgin appeared with her face covered in dew amid the dry, arid Andalusian lands near the Hermitage of El Rocío. In Spain, the carved face of this Virgin, fixed on a simple, articulated wooden mannequin, is highly venerated. Spanish faithful dress it in brightly-colored flamenco dresses and carry it in a procession every year on Ascension Day.
The idea immediately appealed to the parish priest of the time, who went to Seville to collect the divine face. What the Count of Paris didn’t know is that this particular servant of God was no ordinary man.
Illumination and a miracle
Jean-Louis Ducamp is the kind of priest who likes to move. Alongside his seminary studies, he studied psychiatry “because I was bored stiff,” he says. Even today, at 87 years old, he still has a twinkle in his eye as he sits down to a hearty plate of spaghetti and a glass of wine in his favorite Italian restaurant in Paris.
In 1985, with the AIDS virus raging, Ducamp decided to turn the chapel into a place of refuge. In the evenings and even at night, he welcomed prostitutes and HIV-positive people seeking a few moments of warmth and comfort. At the time, many of these one-night parishioners came from the world of fashion and entertainment.
The Virgin? “She’ll be my best customer.”
“I’m a psychoanalyst, so I know how to listen. But I’m also a priest, and I wanted this Virgin to welcome the prayers of those suffering from the modern violence of exclusion and illness, and to be dressed in the most beautiful of gowns,” says the priest. That was how he had the “illumination” to telephone the greatest couturier of the time: ‘Monsieur’ Yves Saint Laurent.
Work on the jewels
And the first miracle took place: the somewhat cold call to the fashion house reached Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s partner and the label’s co-founder, who knew some of the faithful attending the church at the time. Touched by the priest’s speech, Bergé invited him to meet Saint Laurent and share his idea. He accepted, declaring that the Virgin “shall be my best customer.”
For the designer, it was both a gesture of compassion for all the gay men who were dying in silence at the time, and an artistic challenge: “He had to make a timeless dress that would not degrade over time,” says fashion specialist Inès Jourde. Saint Laurent asked Hector Pascual, in charge of stage costumes, to give him a hand, and brought on the goldsmith Goossens to work on the jewels.
Saint Laurent himself came to dress the Virgin. And every Christmas, she was paraded through the streets of the neighborhood like a star. A procession from the chapel to the Palais des Congrès exhibition center, where Father Ducamp celebrated mass on the main stage for five years.
Lost and found
As the years went by, Ducamp eventually left Paris for a diocese in Burundi. And the YSL tradition gradually faded away. That was until 2017, when Inès Jourde and her husband arrived from New York and settled in the neighborhood.
A devoted Catholic with a career in fashion, Jourde found out from Father Lancray-Javal, the current parish priest, that New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art had contacted the church about an exhibition.
At Saint Laurent, it was vaguely remembered that “Monsieur” had designed a dress for a Virgin.
Incredulous, Jourde, a consultant for major fashion houses, followed the priest into the crypt where they discover in a cupboard the brocade garments on which, in a simple bag, the Goossens jewels were placed.
Thus rediscovered, the famous garments were a feature of the exhibition “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” at the Met in May 2018. The dress now officially belongs to the diocese and is kept at the Saint Laurent museum. It only comes out in the church at Christmas time, to shine until Easter.
