Eve-Claudine Lorétan ("Coco")
Age 2925 Sep 1998
Bern (Switzerland)
Suicide
Coco died by suicide. In 1991 she had been the subject of the Paul Riniker documentary Traum Frau Coco, and in 2018 Konzert Theater Bern dedicated the musical Coco to her.
The journey back in time to Coco begins in the Sisters of Scissors hair salon in Bern's Lorraine district. Jean Cotter, hairdresser and makeup artist on Swiss film sets, was a companion of Coco – the woman who became Switzerland's most famous transgender person through Paul Riniker's documentary "Traum Frau Coco" (1991). A woman who spent her short life searching for the leading role.
Coco was born [deadname] in Thun in 1969, into a middle-class life: [her] father, mother, sister, and [herself]. But the small town was too confining a nest for nonconformists like [her]. Lorétan was the maverick of the high school. [Her] unconventional clothing and playful exploration of gender roles caused a sensation. [She] graduated in 1988. By then, Lorétan was living as a woman in Bern. A beautiful woman who turned heads wherever she went.
Bern in the late 1980s was a fertile ground for people outside the norm. The Reitschule (riding school) was conquered, then the Dampfzentrale (steam center). With acid house, one of the first techno movements, a new music emerged, along with a new feeling of life. Euphoria, synthetic sounds, celebrated artificiality: attributes perfectly suited to the then-vibrant queer scene, for gay men, lesbians, and intersex people.
Right in the thick of one of the first acid house parties was this young person, whose male chromosomes were only apparent upon closer inspection. In December 1989, Coco, dressed in suspenders and a nun's habit, posed in the unheated Dampfzentrale club, alongside other men and women in go-go dancer attire. Jean Cotter was among them.
Cotter remembers how he met Coco. He worked at the Ops Divina hair salon. Coco became his customer. Later, Cotter opened his own salon, FHK (for "free hair culture"), in Brunngasse – behind the Condomeria where Coco worked.
Soon the two were performing and became well-known throughout the city for their dance shows at parties in the riding school, the Dampfzentrale (a former steam-powered cultural center), and gay clubs, not least because they would strip naked without hesitation. Soon, a third member joined them: Carmila Wyss, who later called herself Pierce. "Der Die Das," as they called themselves, was the most exciting go-go group far and wide. "That was an intense time," recalls Jean Cotter.
Coco turned her playful exploration of gender roles into a serious one. At just 21, she underwent gender reassignment surgery, adapting her body to the feeling that a woman lived within this male shell.
She was accompanied by a camera crew. Paul Riniker produced a documentary about her, filming before and after her surgeries. "Traum Frau Coco," broadcast on Swiss television in 1991, made the young transgender woman famous throughout Switzerland. "Traum Frau Coco" portrays a woman searching for her identity, perfectly embodying her role as a woman. Not for a second does the woman appear contrived; the man is barely perceptible. Her delicate features contribute to this. But so does her self-destructive drive to starve herself to an extreme thinness. A dark portrait in which an introspective, vulnerable Coco plays the leading role.
And one woman who isn't any happier with the gender reassignment: In the documentary, she puts it bluntly: "I've tinkered with the TV so much, but the film is still just so bad." A scene at the family table in Thun is almost unbearable. Coco's mother says of her 20-year-old child's decision to transition from biological son to daughter: "I think it's just great." Maintaining appearances is everything. Her other daughter, Dominique, died in 1989. She frequented the Platzspitz in Zurich.
The move to television was a step into public awareness. Suddenly everyone knew that such a thing existed, in Bern, in Thun, in the villages: people who are trapped in the wrong body. And who are fighting for normalcy.
When she went out in public, Coco remained exuberant and sought the limelight. Back then, Bern's subcultures frequented the Olmo clothing store on Zeughausgasse in Bern, co-founded by Francis Foss Pauchard. Pauchard retired a year and a half ago and handed the store over to his younger brothers. He remembers Coco well, her delicate features and her "grandeur." "It's actually astonishing how vividly she's remained in my memory," he says. "Extroverted people have always been good for this city." He saw all sorts of oddballs in his store. He recalls the brothers Stevo and Nilo Nilovic, who now run the restaurants Luce and Il Grissino. They were known as Teddys in the early 80s, when rock 'n' roll and the iconic Elvis pompadour were experiencing a revival. A few years later, Coco arrived.
From 1994, Coco lived in the "drag house" in Obstberg, together with Jean Cotter and Carmila Wyss, her two comrades from "Der Die Das." Here, the three of them had their own stage. Wild parties took place in the squat. Jean Cotter recalls: "The house was big, but full of junk. With our exhibitions, events, and parties, we financed the next skip load of rubbish to clear out another room." A house pig lived under the stairs. Everyone who recounts the days of the raucous and intoxicating parties in the drag house remembers the pig.
Coco told the Viennese about her macrobiotic recipes; "she had a missionary zeal," says Minder. The young transgender people hung on the words of the self-assured woman from Thun. In Paris, she partied at the legendary Palace nightclub. Minder is convinced that Coco would be an influencer today, marketing herself via social media like Instagram and living a good life. "Even 'Der Die Das' could have made it big," Minder believes.
But the Coco era was short-lived. Claudine-Eve Loretan, as she was officially called after the operation, suffered from the consequences of gender reassignment and the side effects of the medication she had to take. Her mental health remained unstable. To earn money, she worked as a [sex worker] in brothels in Bern and Thun. There, she still attracted attention.
Longtime friends turned their backs on her. Jean Cotter, and later Carmila Wyss. They lived together in Obstberg for two years, then Cotter couldn't take it anymore. "For a while, we were like a surrogate family to her." But Coco's inner turmoil put a strain on the group. On the one hand, there was her need for recognition, her extravagant lifestyle, her obsession with healthy eating, and her excessive cocaine use. On the other hand, Coco struggled with life. Her longing for normalcy, for a completely ordinary man, was incompatible with her reality.
On September 25, 1998, almost two years after the trio had broken up, Coco took her own life. She had found refuge with a friend, a single mother with two children. When the woman came home one day, she found Coco [suicide method redacted].
An abrupt break in the film, yet simultaneously an uncompromising production à la Coco, right to the very end. Even today, Jean Cotter has no understanding for the gruesome suicide. What's the point of mending the pieces after that?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve-Claudine_Lor%C3%A9tan
https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/coco-spielte-in-ihrem-film-immer-die-hauptrolle-670337256852
https://zagria.blogspot.com/2019/12/eve-claudine-loretan-coco-1969-1998.html
