Antoinette K-Doe

Although her husband, rhythm-and-blues singer Ernie K-Doe, died eight years ago, he was still at his wife’s New Orleans funeral after her death on Fat Tuesday at age 66. But this Ernie was a fully costumed mannequin seated in a mule-drawn carriage that followed her casket. As the widow of the self-proclaimed “Emperor of the Universe”–whose 1961 hit song “Mother-in-Law” provided the name for the music lounge the couple would later establish as a New Orleans institution–Antoinette thought it her duty to keep Ernie’s memory alive with the life-size likeness she kept at the establishment. The mannequin’s hands were removable so that she could take them for periodic manicures, which Ernie often had while alive.

The couple’s eccentricities abounded, and Antoinette never played them down. She had, after all, helped bring Ernie back from a life of alcoholism and penury following his initial success, resurrecting a man who lived to perform in the elaborate outfits that she often stitched together.

As Antoinette made her way through a town famous for celebrating its dead–in a glass-topped coffin and glass-walled hearse, no less–she displayed the unapologetic verve that she and Ernie were known for: they both wore head-to-toe white and jewelry befitting an emperor and his loyal empress.