Former president of the Miss France committee, Geneviève de Fontenay died at the age of 90, her son Xavier de Fontenay announced to TF1 on Wednesday August 2. Born Geneviève Mullmann on August 30, 1932 in Longwy in Meurthe-et-Moselle, she was the eldest of ten siblings. His father André, a mining engineer in the steelworks of Hagondange, in Moselle, is a rather Mendesist left-wing man, his mother Marie-Thérèse is a housewife and fervent Catholic. Uneventful childhood and loving parents with a strict upbringing. Without much enthusiasm, she first entered the technical hotel school in Strasbourg, then left at the age of 17 to attend the Antoine school of aesthetics in Paris before being hired as a beautician. itinerant.
She met for the first time in 1952 Louis Poirot, known as “de Fontenay”, her pseudonym of resistant, organizer of Miss France, during the election of Miss Carnac where she won an amateur model contest alongside him. She resumed contact with him in 1954. From then on, they never left each other, they chose never to marry and had two sons, Ludovic – who died in 1984 at the age of 29 – and Xavier.
Media coverage of the competition by FR3
With her companion, 24 years her senior, she became secretary of the Miss France committee in 1954 and took on multiple roles, driver, steward, coach, costume designer, while Louis de Fontenay took care of communication and the presentation of the ‘election. They crisscrossed France together for more than twenty-five years to organize elections and galas in the regions, surveying aboard their DS the roads and terroirs of France.
On the death of Louis de Fontenay in 1981 at the age of 73, Geneviève de Fontenay took over the reins of the Miss France committee alone and involved her son Xavier, who held the position of director of the Miss France society. As a VRP for Miss France, Geneviève de Fontenay takes to the road each season, traveling more than 30,000 kilometers crossing this France that she loves so much for “tradition, farmers and simple people”. This small company took a long time to be profitable, but on New Year’s Eve 1986, this somewhat outdated regional show received unprecedented media coverage when the presenter Guy Lux decided to program the election of Miss France. The success was immediate and will be broadcast in prime time on TF1 from 1995. A popular television show every year with the French with audiences that can bring together 12 to 15 million viewers.
His son Xavier decided in 2002 to make a lucrative operation by selling the Miss France company to the reality TV production company Endemol, while retaining his title of director, and Geneviève de Fontenay that of president of the Miss France committee and director. assistant.
A conservative vision of French elegance
In 2004, the former Miss France, Sylvie Tellier took over the management of the company and the following year published a book confessions Geneviève de Fontenay. Without compromise. Conversations with Sylvie Tellier Miss France 2002 (ed. Michel Lafon). Deep ethical disagreements arise between the life president and the Endemol company. Classicism imbued with traditional values ??on one side against modernist tendencies on the other – the bikini replacing the legendary one-piece swimsuit. But with the Miss France brand, “we are in this deep France of the provinces which counterbalances all this scruffy France”, likes to repeat the one who is nicknamed the “lady in the hat”. Tired of all these changes that she considers vulgar, she ends up abdicating in 2011 and launches a dissident competition, Miss National, renamed Miss Prestige national after a court decision.
At 83, Geneviève de Fontenay takes her leave and announces her retirement during the fifth edition of Miss Prestige national 2016, having worked for more than sixty years to promote her conservative vision of French elegance. Acclaimed by the media, she continued to enjoy a success of esteem with the public and remains a good client for radio or television programs – with Thierry Ardisson or Laurent Ruquier. Because under her bourgeois appearance, she never ceases to denounce with her outspokenness social injustices by claiming her left-wing affiliation and her commitment to the little people which symbolizes in her eyes the France she loves, popular France.
