Leonor Scherrer | Death Becomes Her

Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello

“Death has become banal,” proclaims Leonor Scherrer, the daughter of the French couturier Jean-Louis Scherrer and the mind behind one of the ghastliest start-ups since the Grim Reaper: Leonor Funeral Couture. Scherrer is building a fashion line to outfit the bereaved that harks back to a time when “a widow’s mourning dress was closely observed,” as in Goya’s painting of the Duchess of Alba. Her line even comes complete with its own fragrance, Maximilia, named after Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish friar who took the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz. Scherrer’s lavish youth is a roman à clef waiting to happen: Catholic school, a caretaker named Guigui, her father’s boutique on the Avenue Montaigne, which, she notes, was once called “L’Allée des Veuves” or “Widows’ Way.” Lately, she’s been dabbling in music, and one of the tracks off her forthcoming album is a cover of Schubert’s “Death and The Maiden.” Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci digs the six-feet-under-obsessed Scherrer, featuring her in a recent ad campaign. “I’m completely in love with her,” he told Women’s Wear Daily. “For me, she represents France in all senses: the elegance, the aristocracy” — and, évidemment — “the darkness.”