2023-08-09 06:24:00
The “lady in the hat”, who died on July 31 at the age of 90, was buried on Tuesday in Ivry-sur-Seine. Only those closest to him were present, according to his will.
Geneviève de Fontenay, historical figure of the Miss France contest, was buried Tuesday afternoon in the family intimacy in the Parisian cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), learned AFP by her entourage.
Carried away on July 31 at the end of the evening by a cardiac arrest, at the age of 90, Geneviève de Fontenay joined in the family vault her companion Louis Poirot dit de Fontenay and their eldest son Ludovic, who died in the 1980s.
On several occasions in interviews, Geneviève de Fontenay had wanted her funeral to take place without a religious ceremony and in the strictest family privacy.
The Miss of Misses
Nicknamed the “lady in the hat”, because of the Panama hat that never left her, Geneviève de Fontenay has become an inseparable figure in the Miss France contest, which she led with an iron fist for decades.
Born Geneviève Mulmann on August 30, 1932 in Longwy (Meurthe-et-Moselle), she moved to Paris in the early 1950s to train as a beautician. There she meets Louis Poirot, known as de Fontenay, who will become her companion. This man of 24 years his senior then directs the election. When she passed away in 1981, Geneviève de Fontenay alone took charge of the competition.
Turbulent history
Defending a conservative image of femininity, she was gradually ostracized from the takeover of the Miss France company by Endemol in 2002. Very attached to the most conservative principles of the competition, intransigent towards elected officials who broke the rules, Geneviève de Fontenay had been pushed out and left the presidency in 2010 in favor of Sylvie Tellier, Miss France 2002.
She was also a controversial figure. Geneviève de Fontenay was indicted last June for insults and incitement to transphobic discrimination, following a statement released in December 2021 in which she believed that a transgender Miss France would be “against nature”. His paradoxical political positions, from Arlette Laguiller to Ségolène Royal via Florian Philippot, have influenced his offbeat image.
Benjamin Pierret with AFP
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