Bill Willis, the aesthete of Marrakech<

Bill Willis personal archive

Seduced by this magical playground, many of them built their secret garden inside the ramparts of the medina, like Paul Getty, who asked his friend Willis to restore the magnificent Zahia palace (later taken over by Alain Delon then Bernard-Henri Lévy). This will be the architect's first work in Morocco. Willis embodies pure chic with his Montgomery Clift physique. Same charming look, framed by high cheekbones, but with green eyes and curly black hair. “I have never met someone so glamorous. Bill had exceptional taste and style. It's a pity that Marianne [Faithfull] is traveling, she would have liked to talk to you about him, ”says Bill Strongi, a former friend of the architect, reached by telephone in Italy. With the English singer and a handful of others, this former hairdresser is one of the rare survivors of this merry band who was not carried away by AIDS or the abuse of parties, kif and cocaine. Missing the art dealer Robert Fraser, missing Joe McPhilipps, director of the American School of Tangier or Preston Scott, the old college classmate, missing the beautiful Talitha Getty, killed by an overdose at the age of 30, missing the couturier Yves Saint Laurent, to whom Morocco owes so much.

“At the time, Marrakech was a sleeping princess shunned by the Rabatis and the Casaouis,” recalls Quito Fierro, the secretary general of the Majorelle garden, who knew Willis well. The palm grove is still wild. Jacqueline Foissac, her mother, now 89 years old, was one of those pioneers who acquired land to build there in 1968. “We didn't have electricity but we gave incredible parties every night! The city then has no more than one nightclub and two bars where alcohol is served. But it is behind the scenes, in private parties, that the party takes place. The most sumptuous villas open onto lush gardens tamed by the best landscape designers, such as Madison Cox, author of the Majorelle garden and that of the Oasis villa, residence of Pierre Bergé and the late Saint Laurent.

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"We met Bill the week of our arrival, in February 1967, during a dinner at the Getty", says Pierre Bergé who receives us in June in the villa Oasis, the former residence of the painter Jacques Majorelle. He specifies: “Ira Belline, a Russian related to Tolstoy, ex-designer of costumes for Louis Jouvet, and the artist Brion Gysin, the inventor of the Dreamachine [a drug-free hallucination machine], were there. Fifty years have passed but the memory of this first stay is still vivid. “Initially, like everyone else, we came for the sun,” he says, not without irony, recalling the rainy week spent with Yves Saint Laurent at La Mamounia. In his Letters to Yves (Gallimard, 2010), the businessman describes this baptism in exotic land: “One morning, we woke up and the sun was there. The Moroccan sun digging into the corners. The birds were singing, the Atlas barred the horizon with snow, the smells of jasmine were rising in our room. That morning we never forgot him because, in a way, he decided our fate. » Happened by the place, the couple did not wait to acquire their very first residence in the medina: Dar el-Hanch (the house of the snake), ex-property of Maurice Doan, the brother-in-law of Barbara Hutton. “Bill is the first to have had an exact 'eye' on this country. Everyone who came after followed in his footsteps,” says Bergé from the outset.