Maxime de la Falaise

Maxime Le Bailly, comtesse de La Falaise (25 June 1922 – 30 April 2009), was an English-Irish 1950s model, and, in the 1960s, an underground movie actress. She was also a cookery writer and "food maven" as well as a fashion designer for Blousecraft, Chloé and Gérard Pipart. In her later years she pursued a career as a furniture and interior designer. Early life She was born 22 June 1922 in West Dean, West Sussex, England as Maxine Birley into a family of successful artists, businesspeople and academics. She grew up in Hampstead, and later at Charleston Manor, East Sussex. Her father, Sir Oswald Birley (1880–1952), was a celebrated portrait painter known for his portraits of royalty and others. Her mother was Rhoda Vava Mary Lecky Pike, of County Carlow, a gardener and successful artist. Maxine's brother, Mark Birley (1930–2007), became an entrepreneur known for his investments in the hospitality industry. She changed her first name to Maxime after her first marriage, to French aristocrat Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise, in 1946. She was known as Maxime de La Falaise McKendry, for a while, after her second marriage to John McKendry, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum. Career During the Second World War, she worked as a minor codebreaker at Bletchley Park, before being invalided out after developing kleptomania.