Fifi Chachnil reinterprets Lola's corset for the Jacques Demy exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française

Jacques Demy's films have always inspired Fifi. This world where sailors in love, modern princesses and dreaming dancers rub shoulders and fuss. The costumes, the choreographies, the plots, everything fascinates our creator who knows all these films like the back of her hand.

So when Rosalie Varda, the daughter of Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda and also a friend, contacted her to make a replica of Lola's corset, she happily accepted!

Wasp-waisted corset made by the Fifi Chachnil workshops exhibited at the Cinémathèque Française.

Fifi was also invited to write a preface to the DVD edition of the film restored thanks to the work of the Demy-Varda family.

“When we think of Lola, it is the sublime Anouk Aimée in her music hall singer's corset who appears to us. In this outfit, Lola poses, not as a sad and abandoned single mother, but as a joyful woman who believes in love, in her dreams, and who proves to us that she is right.

The wasp-waisted corset, the quintessential symbol of the light woman, Lola calls it her "swimsuit", she lives with it in the city as well as on stage. The film could not have been a musical comedy but Lola lives her life as such, she has the costume.

Jacques Demy was inspired by American actresses of the post-war period. He dedicated Lola to Max Ophuls who in Le Plaisir brought to life free and corseted women. He invented Lola, a glamorous, moving and funny woman… timeless.

Jacques Demy will always inspire us to live our dream life.

Thank you Mr. Demy”