Lolo Ferrari and Her Spectacularly Globular Breasts

"I have to wear a bra day and night," Lolo confessed in a September 1995 edition of The People, from London's Sunday Mirror, "for the weight is just too much without one?even in bed." Well, yes, no doubt all very true, but the process of Ferrari strapping herself into a 57FFF brassiere often served as mere prologue to her removing it?and all other articles of attire?during a popular striptease act, performed in European clubs and discos with the aid of a backing band, wherein she sang songs such as "Undress Me," "Girls, Girls, Girls" and "You Can Leave Your Hat On," in addition to the hits of the moment. As she explained in that 1995 interview, "My show consists of a song and a strip. I sign autographs, and let amateurs take photographs."

Professionals took photographs as well, and made porn movies, all of them starring Ferrari's spectacularly globular breasts, constructed with the aid of 13 pounds of implanted silicone during 18 operations, begun in 1990 when she was 20 and concluding five years later. "The first operation was very painful," she once noted, "but the other times weren't so bad." Unfazed by the scalpel, Lolo also submitted to five nose operations (to reduce it), five lip operations (for that bee-stung look) and three on her cheeks (facial, not buttock). "I want to be wholly artificial," she told The People. "I fear everything that is natural. It just upsets me. I enjoy having the surgery to change myself into another being." In that endeavor she succeeded: Post-op, she vaguely resembled Brigitte Bardot, with somewhat feral features, long platinum-blonde hair and, excepting her substantial bust, an otherwise normally proportioned body. She was born Eve Valois in Brittany, western France, the second of four children of a father who reportedly worked in the nuclear energy industry. At age 17 she split school to pursue a modeling career, although her naturally bountiful physique?presurgeries, her chest checked in at 37 inches?encouraged appearances in skin magazines. Breast enhancement enabled her to graduate to X films and to launch her erotic club act, for which she adopted the stage moniker Lolo (French slang for "chest") Ferrari (a grandfather's surname), and in 1995 she copped the titles of Miss Tits Europe and Miss Airbag. She married Eric Vigne, her manager, and the couple settled into an estate in Grasse, just west of the French Riviera city of Nice and conveniently close to Cannes, where Lolo ventured each spring for the famous annual film festival, making herself accessible for interviews and photo opportunities.

Her fame grew. Leaving behind porn films, Ferrari recorded an album, the disco-y Airbag Generation, released in February 1996 (predictably, it stiffed); joined the cast of the saucy weekly British tv show Eurotrash in September of that same year, serving as introductress of naughty pop music videos; and turned up in Belgian filmmaker Jan Bucquoy's comedy Camping Cosmos, also in 1996. Meanwhile, Vigne and Ferrari sought to establish a Lolo brand, with the intention of marketing various Lolo-related merchandise, notably undies and replica dolls. Accordingly, in November 1995 the couple registered her trade name with the French National Industrial Property Institute (INPI), a move that attracted the attention of the high-performance Italian sports car manufacturer Ferrari, which in March 1996 lodged a complaint with the French agency, alleging trademark violation. "We have nothing against Eve Valois," the automaker's communications office announced, "but our legal experts automatically react when, somewhere in the world, the unique heritage of Ferrari is threatened." Grateful for the free publicity, Lolo and Vigne nonetheless returned rhetorical fire through their attorney, Serge Pautot, who quipped, "There can be no question here of competition, imitation, or an attack on the image of the trademark. The only common denominator she could possibly have with the car is on the chassis level, but there is no risk of confusion."

Apparently, INPI disagreed, and in September 1996 it sided with the corporate Ferrari, forbidding Lolo to trademark her name. Unbowed, the Lolo forces rallied against what Pautot termed "this preposterous decision," appealing the ruling while vowing to continue to use the stage name until a conclusive verdict was reached. Finally, in February 1998 a judge in Aix-en-Provence put the matter to rest, dismissing the company's objections and restoring Lolo's trademarking prerogatives, when he decreed, "People do not get her confused with Italian sports cars."

Savoring legal vindication, Ferrari and Vigne rolled out Lolo shoes, t-shirts, perfume, photos and videos at an online "boutique," part of her Web-based fan club, which also offers paid memberships and helpfully resolves the discrepancies regarding her bust line: officially, 51 inches. Additionally, it observes, in endearingly fractured English, that Lolo's "sexy, musical and comical shows make all publics be delirious." Those same "publics" were saddened when Vigne found Lolo dead in their Grasse home on March 5, an autopsy attributing her death, at age 30, to "natural causes." Admirers from the UK, U.S., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, Senegal, Switzerland and Mauritius, among other nations, reacted immediately, signing the website's "condolence book." One, John, from Holland, typically mourns, "We will miss you and your big boobs forever."

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