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It's hard to pinpoint what exactly makes these enchantresses so alluring, but designers from Lagerfeld to McCartney are smitten. Lynn Yaeger investigates. More than a Muse Bowles, curator of the recent exhibit, "Balenciaga: Spanish Master." "The cat kept moving and he got frustrated," Bowles explains, "which is, perhaps, why he always thought about moveability and comfort in his designs later on." The silent muse behind an artist has enthralled the fashion world for more N than a century. But if a brief survey of designers working today turns up no fe- lines (at least none admitted to on the record) there is a huge variety of inspi- rational presences currently keeping creatures up at night. The singer Florence Welch (who is over six feet tall, has a halo of scarlet hair, and before her recent ascent to superstardom bought her fairy princess ensembles at British thrift shops) not only made an appearance at the Spring 2012 Chanel show in Paris, emerging Venus de Milo style (another muse!) from a giant clamshell on the runway, but she also currently serves as an inspiration to Frida Giannini at Gucci. "I was incredibly flattered and it was a real joy to work with Frida—the pieces she created were so perfect for performing in, such dream dresses!"Welch says of the experience. o doubt you've always assumed that the angelic creatures who inspire fashion designers are long-limbed goddesses—soignée starlets or bright young things about town. But in at least one case this ethereal being had not two legs but four. "At age six, Ba- lenciaga cut his first coat—for his cat," recalls Vogue's Hamish Elle Fanning plays muse to designers including Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs. But frankly, who knows how long that relationship will last? Ask Karl Lager- Although Stella McCartney claims not to have muses, she does often look to her mother for inspiration. 40 BAL HARBOUR feld, who in his storied career has been enamored of everyone from Claudia Schiffer to Lily Allen to Blake Lively to Inès de la Fressange. Actually, de la Fressange has had the honor of musedom twice—in the 1980s she and Lager- feld were co-conspirators, until she allowed the French government to borrow her visage for the face of Marianne, symbol of France. Lagerfeld, never shy about his feelings, dismissed this as emblematic of "everything that is boring, bourgeois, and provincial." The two were estranged for a long time, but have patched things up—de la Fressange walked his Spring 2011 Chanel runway, and the audience gasped and cheered.