In the 1960s and 1970s, a French business executive known simply as Madame Claude reigned over Paris like an uncrowned head of state. She dressed in Chanel, had millions in the bank and was the very model of elegance and discretion.
She seemed to know everything going on in the worlds of commerce, diplomacy, show business and even the criminal demimonde. She enjoyed international acclaim and had the confidence — some would say the protection — of the highest echelons of the French government.
She was the proprietor of what may have been the most elite and refined brothel in the world.
Madame Claude, whose real name was Fernande Grudet, died Dec. 19 at a hospital in Nice, France, at age 92. He death was first reported by the French media.
Prostitution is not strictly forbidden in France. What is against the law, however, is to procure a prostitute’s services and profit from the transaction. But such niceties seldom bothered Ms. Grudet, who fashioned a comfortable life out of necessity, a quiet voice and a head for money.
Fernande Grudet, also known as Madame Claude, in 1986. (Michel Gangne/AFP/Getty Images)
Her early years remain sketchy, unsubstantiated and contradictory. Did she, as she suggested, serve in the French Resistance during World War II? Was she held in a concentration camp? Was she a fallen aristocrat who once sold Bibles door to door? Or was she merely a streetwalker who went indoors and upscale?
This much, however, is certain, because Ms. Grudet wrote it in an autobiography first published in the 1970s: “There are two things that people will always pay money for. Food and sex, and I wasn’t any good at cooking.”
It’s unclear precisely when Ms. Grudet remade herself as Madame Claude, but she had set up shop in Paris near an exclusive men’s club no later than 1961.
She subjected job seekers to “ferocious” scrutiny, rejecting 19 of every 20 women who applied. She quizzed them on history and cultural matters. They had to stand naked before Ms. Grudet’s examining eye and, perhaps even more embarrassing, show her the contents of their purses.
She preferred tall, slender women who spoke several languages and were comfortable “in front of a king, three princes, four ministers and five ambassadors at an official dinner,” she told the Chicago Tribune in 1987.
Ms. Grudet called her employees “swans”; others called them “Claudettes.” Many of them later married into nobility, wealth and fame.
As many as 200 women worked for Ms. Grudet at a time, reportedly including a countess, the daughter of a top French general, a university professor, fashion models, dancers, college students — and several wives of French public figures. Actress Joan Collins wrote in her 1997 memoir “Second Act” that Ms. Grudet attempted to recruit her during a sojourn in California in the 1970s.
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