In 1976, at the age of 16, Farida Khelfa ran away from her traditional Muslim home in suburban Lyon, hitchhiked to Paris and fell in with a crowd of fashionable club kids at the happening disco, La Palace. One, a 15-year-old named Christian Louboutin, invited her to live with him and his mother in east Paris. Another, the Chanel house model Frédérique Lorca, took her to meet the up-and-coming designer Jean Paul Gaultier at his showroom.
“It was as if a lightning bolt had struck us,” Mr. Gaultier recalled of the moment Ms. Khelfa had walked in. “Instant love.”
Mr. Gaultier had Ms. Khelfa try on some of his clothes and walk for him. “With her long, black curly hair, puffed up on top, like a banana, her relaxed gait and her Algerian heritage, she was a natural who reflected the new diversity in France and fashion at the time,” he said in an interview this week. He asked her to model in his next show, the “James Bond” collection for fall 1979-1980. Though she knew nothing about fashion, she thought, “Why not?”
For the show, Mr. Gaultier dressed her in a tight black turtleneck over a bullet bra and cinched with a wide black patent leather belt, black stretch stirrup pants and pointy-toed boots. “At the time, most catwalk models were white, blond — Swedish-looking — and very formal, posing with their hand on their hip,” he said. “Farida, with her mounds of curly black hair and North African complexion, walked casually down the runway chewing gum! It was audacious, shocking and extremely modern.” Thus was born one of French fashion’s most influential muses.
In addition to her long association with Mr. Gaultier — she modeled for him, assisted in the studio and, in the early 2000s, served as his couture director — Ms. Khelfa cultivated personal and professional relationships with Azzedine Alaïa, Thierry Mugler, Mr. Louboutin (once he became a luxury shoe designer), Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Pierre Cardin, Haider Ackermann and Daniel Roseberry at Schiaparelli, the French couture house for which she now serves as a brand ambassador.
They, in turn, gave her clothes, accessories and shoes, most of which she kept and wore. Now she is letting go of 200 items in an online sale hosted by Maurice Auctions in Paris, through Dec. 11. Half the proceeds will go to Riace France, a charity that supports refugees, founded by the French industrialist Olivier Legrain.
“There’s a real coherence to her wardrobe, which is rare,” Salomé Pirson, a founder of Maurice Auctions, said in a warehouse tour of the items for sale. “These were not clothes that a collector picked up in stores and at sales. You can see and feel her energy and her influence on French fashion.”
Fashion was a wholly unknown universe to Ms. Khelfa while growing up, one of nine children born of Algerian immigrants in Les Minguettes, a turbulent housing community on the edge of Lyon. “For me, fashion was French singers in spangled costumes on TV,” she said in an interview in her 16th Arrondissement apartment. She was wearing a vintage Gaultier navy pinstripe double-breasted suit with large rounded shoulders. “I didn’t have magazines. Only TV.”
That all changed when she landed at La Palace, the Studio 54 of Paris, which she and Mr. Louboutin hit almost nightly. “I discovered a life that I didn’t know existed,” she said. “I saw that fashion was more than sequins — there was a culture. I met Yves Saint Laurent and his entourage. I met Roland Barthes and Louis Aragon, which was amazing to me, because I went to a school named for Aragon’s wife, Elsa Triolet.”
And there was the Gaultier connection, via her club gang. “La Palace opened a new world to me,” she said. “It gave me freedom.”
In the early 1980s, there were two more encounters that would prove to be life-changing. The first was with the French photographer and illustrator Jean-Paul Goude, known then for his work with his former girlfriend Grace Jones, notably her “Slave to the Rhythm” album cover, and his goofy Perrier commercials. They met when Ms. Khelfa was the gatekeeper at Les Bain Douches, another happening nightclub, situated in a onetime 19th-century bathhouse decorated by the interior design newcomer Philippe Starck. Ms. Khelfa and Mr. Goude became an “it” couple and she his favorite photographic subject.
“If you look through pictures of Paris fashion and nightlife in the 1980s, you will see Farida,” Ms. Pirson said. “She really is mythic.”
The second transformative moment came when Mr. Goude took Ms. Khelfa to see Mr. Alaïa at his studio on the Left Bank. “He was making tartan skirts, which wasn’t his style,” she said. “I tried on the clothes, and he proposed that I walk in his show in two weeks, and I did. He paid us in clothes, which probably cost him a fortune because they cost a lot to make.”
Ms. Khelfa became Mr. Alaïa’s model, fittings assistant and, from 1996 to 2003, studio director. “When I arrived, no matter what time it was, he’d be at his table sewing, cutting or working on an outfit,” she said. “At 3 a.m., he would be fixing the tiniest details, while we were all falling-down exhausted. I don’t know any designer today who works like that.”
Half the pieces in the auction are Alaïa, who died in 2017 from a heart attack. They include his signature knit jersey bodysuits, buttery leather coats and skirts, a pair of chunky sweaters from 1988 and a few jaunty looks from his 1990 collaboration with the now-defunct French discount retailer, Tati. The most beautiful ensemble is a black ball skirt and bolero made from woven raffia, from his spring 1996 collection, with a lowball estimation of 800 to 1,200 euros ($900 to $1,400).
“It’s a marvel, a splendor,” Ms. Khelfa said. Ms. Pirson believes it will likely go to a museum or the Alaïa archives.
There is a fair amount of Gaultier in the sale, too, including sharply tailored trenches, jackets and suits, much of it in black. “When I was young, I only wore black — that was my thing,” Ms. Khelfa said. Among the gems is a black-beaded halter top from Gaultier’s spring 2012 haute couture collection, “Homage to Amy Winehouse,” which also carries an estimate of 800 to 1,200 euros and which Ms. Khelfa helped embroider.
“Growing up in an Algerian household, I was taught two things — how to cook and how to sew, so I could be a good housewife,” she said, laughing. When stress levels redlined in the Gaultier studio during the run-up to a show, she would retreat to the atelier, sit down with the seamstresses, pick up a needle and thread and join in.
The remaining offerings include Hermès ready-to-wear, pre-Roseberry Schiaparelli, Pierre Cardin (“by Pierre himself,” Ms. Khelfa noted) and footwear by Pierre Hardy and Christian Louboutin.
“Farida loves fashion, is fashion and was never a fashion victim,” Mr. Louboutin said.
Since 2010, Ms. Khelfa has directed and produced documentaries, about Mr. Gaultier and Mr. Louboutin, as well as ones about artistic youth in Tunisia and the 2012 French presidential campaign. (Her best friend, the former model Carla Bruni, is married to the losing candidate, former President Nicolas Sarkozy.) In 2012, Ms. Khelfa wed her longtime partner, Henri Seydoux, making her the stepmother of the actress Léa Seydoux and the fashion stylist Camille Seydoux. Together, the couple have two sons.
Last year, Ms. Khelfa published her memoirs, “Une Enfance Française” (“A French Childhood”), about her violent childhood and the painful legacy of colonization, to great success. She is developing the book into a feature film that she hopes to direct.
“Maybe I’ll make an appearance in it, like Hitchcock,” she cracked.
And she still supports young designers, like Jeanne Friot, Alphonse Maitrepierre, who made Ms. Khelfa’s pink taffeta off-the-shoulder gown for the fashion show during the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Paris last year, and Duran Lantink, the new creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier.
“I think Duran is absolutely in the spirit of the house,” Ms. Khelfa said. “And, yes, I’m already wearing those clothes.”
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