yves saint laurent short biography

Yves Saint Laurent

(1936-2008)

Who Was Yves Saint Laurent?

Early years.

Yves Henri Donat Matthieu Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936, in Oran, Algeria, to Charles and Lucienne Andrée Mathieu-Saint-Laurent. He grew up in a villa by the Mediterranean with his two younger sisters, Michelle and Brigitte. While his family was relatively well off — his father was a lawyer and insurance broker who owned a chain of cinemas — childhood for the future fashion icon was not easy. Saint Laurent was not popular in school, and was often bullied by schoolmates for appearing to be homosexual. As a consequence, Saint Laurent was a nervous child, and sick nearly every day.

He found solace, however, in the world of fashion. He liked to create intricate paper dolls, and by his early teen years he was designing dresses for his mother and sisters. At the age of 17, a whole new world opened up to Saint Laurent when his mother took him to Paris for a meeting she'd arranged with Michael de Brunhoff, the editor of French Vogue .

A year later, Saint Laurent, who had impressed de Brunhoff with his drawings, moved to Paris and enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, where his designs quickly gained notice. De Brunhoff also introduced Saint Laurent to designer Christian Dior, a giant in the fashion world. "Dior fascinated me," Saint Laurent later recalled. "I couldn't speak in front of him. He taught me the basis of my art. Whatever was to happen next, I never forgot the years I spent at his side." Under Dior's tutelage, Saint Laurent's style continued to mature and gain still more notice.

Going His Own Way

In 1960 Saint Laurent was called back to his home country of Algeria to fight for its independence. He managed to secure an exemption based on health grounds, but when he returned to Paris, Saint Laurent found that his job with Dior had disappeared. The news, at first, was traumatic for the young, fragile designer. Then it became ugly, with Saint Laurent successfully suing his former mentor for breach of contract, and collecting £48,000.

The money and the freedom soon presented Saint Laurent with a unique opportunity. In cooperation with his partner and lover, Pierre Berge, the designer resolved to open his own fashion house. With the rise of pop culture and a general yearning for original, fresh designs, Saint Laurent's timing couldn't have been better.

Over the next two decades, Saint Laurent's designs sat atop the fashion world. Models and actresses gushed over his creations. He outfitted women in blazers and smoking jackets, and introduced attire like the pea coat to the runway. His signature pieces also included the sheer blouse and the jumpsuit.

Later Years and Death

By the 1980s, Saint Laurent was a true icon. He became the first designer to have a retrospective on his work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Under the direction of Berge, who continued to manage Saint Laurent's firm even though the two had broken up in 1986, the fashion house flourished as a money making venture.

But Saint Laurent struggled. He became reclusive, and fought addictions to alcohol and cocaine. Some in the fashion world complained that the designer's work had grown stale.

In the early 1990s, Saint Laurent found firmer footing. His designs were rediscovered by a fashion elite that had grown tired of the grunge movement that dominated the runways. Saint Laurent, too, seemed to have conquered his demons. By the end of the decade, with Saint Laurent slowing down his work pace, he and Berge had sold the company they'd started, netting the two men a fortune.

In January 2002, Saint Laurent participated in his final show and then retired for good in Marrakech. Five years later, Saint Laurent's imprint and importance on French culture was cemented when he was appointed Grand Officer of the Legion d'honnerur by French President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Yves Saint Laurent passed away in Paris on June 1, 2008 after a brief illness.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Yves Saint Laurent
• Birth Year: 1936
• Birth date: August 1, 1936
• Birth City: Oran
• Birth Country: Algeria
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Yves Saint Laurent was best known as an influential European fashion designer who impacted fashion in the 1960s to the present day.
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• Nacionalities
• Algerian (Algeria)
• Death Year: 2008
• Death date: June 1, 2008
• Death City: Paris
• Death Country: France

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Yves Saint Laurent Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/fashion-designer/yves-saint-laurent
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: August 18, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• Fashion dies, but style remains.

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Yves Saint Laurent

By Jo Craven

Yves Saint Laurent's legacy as a king of fashion designers, who created a masterpiece of a brand, keeps growing.

• Yves Saint Laurent was born in 1936 and grew up in Oran, Algeria
• At 17, he left for Paris where he showed his drawings to Michel

de Brunhoff - director of French Vogue - who published

several of them immediately

• Following a stint at fashion school, Yves Saint Laurent was introduced to Christian Dior where he worked until Dior's death in 1957
• After taking over as art director for Dior, Yves Saint Laurent launched his first collection for the company, the Ligne Trapéze, that year. It was a resounding success and won him a Neiman Marcus Oscar
• In 1962, after completing National Service, Yves Saint Laurent set up his own fashion house with Pierre Bergé
• In 1966, he introduced le smoking - his legendary smoking suit. His other inventions include the reefer jacket (1962), the sheer blouse (1966), and the jumpsuit (1968)
• In October 1998 Yves Saint Laurent showed his last ready-to-wear collection for the Rive Gauche label he had founded more than 30 years before. He carried on his haute couture until 2002
• After a brief stint with Alber Elbaz as designer, in 1999 Tom Ford arrived to take control at the house. The brand entered the stratosphere where it remains today, covering perfume and menswear as well as womenswear.
• At his last show, in 2002, a tearful Yves Saint Laurent took

his final bow as his long-time muse, Catherine Deneuve, sang *Ma

Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour*. Stefano Pilati, who replaced Tom

Ford in 2005, continues Yves Saint Laurent's message that "dressing

is a way of life".

• Yves Saint Laurent died after a long period of ill health at his home in Paris on June 1, 2008. He was 71.

By Alexandre Marain

By Ellie Pithers

By Laura Tortora

By Alice Newbold

By Radhika Seth

By Laura Hawkins

By Maya Singer

Interactive Biographies

These biographies chart the trajectories of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, from the pair’s personal lives and convictions to Saint Laurent’s signature designs and the history of the haute couture house. Explore the topics of your choice and take a look at the major events in their unusual destinies.

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Birth and Early Years on the Île d’Oléron

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5 Must-Know Tales About The Late Yves Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent in his studio.

Today marks what would have been Yves Saint Laurent ‘s 82nd birthday. The French designer, who tragically lost his battle with cancer 10 years ago in Paris, has left an indelible mark on fashion that won’t soon be forgotten. Here, in honor of Saint Laurent’s legacy, we round up five facts to know about the iconic couturier.

#1. He was born and raised in Algeria Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent was born to Lucienne and Charles Mathieu-Saint-Laurent in 1936 in Oran, a port city in Algeria then under French rule. Though Algeria was on the brink of the violent War of Independence, the designer remembered the city as “a cosmopolitan place made up of merchants from everywhere and especially somewhere else… a city that sparkled in a multicolored patchwork under the calm North African sun.” He would eventually move to Paris at the age of 17, where he would enroll at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.

#2. His first taste of fashion was designing dresses for paper dolls Saint Laurent grew up in a Mediterranean villa alongside his older sisters, Michèle and Brigitte. As a shy and timid schoolboy, Saint Laurent was bullied by his peers at the Catholic church he attended, leading him to seek refuge in design. At a young age, he would use scraps of his mother’s clothes to create miniature couture ensembles for paper dolls, and stage fashion shows with these dolls for his siblings and their friends. He would even go so far as to create elaborate invitations for the invitees. As he grew older, Saint Laurent moved from designing ensembles for paper dolls to dreaming up dresses for his mother and sisters.

Courtesy of Rex.

#3. He became the creative director of Christian Dior aged 21 In 1953, Saint Laurent’s drawings caught the attention of Michel de Brunhoff, who was editor-in-chief of French Vogue at the time. Brunhoff showed the sketches to Christian Dior , who hired the talented young designer as an assistant in 1955. When Dior died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1957, the then-21-year-old Saint Laurent was made the creative director of the prestigious maison . His first offering, the Spring 1958 Trapeze collection, practically saved the house from financial ruin. However, things took a turn in 1960, when Saint Laurent found himself conscripted to serve in the French Army during the Algerian War of Independence. Following 20 days of hazing by fellow soldiers, the designer was admitted into a military hospital, where he received the unexpected news that he had been let go from his post as creative director for Dior. The unsettling news worsened his condition, leading to large doses of sedatives and psychoactive drugs, as well as electroshock therapy. Saint Laurent blames his time at the hospital for the mental illness and addiction that plagued him for the rest of his adult life. Upon his release from the hospital, the designer sued Dior for breach of contract, and won. He then started up his own, eponymous label with his longtime business partner Pierre Bergé .

#4. He was the first living designer to be honored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art In 1983, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that the Costume Institute’s exhibition would be completely devoted to the works of Saint Laurent. It would go on to be the first retrospective of a living couturier’s work. The show, entitled “Yves Saint Laurent: 25 Years of Design”, was organized by Diana Vreeland, and displayed 243 of the designer’s most extraordinary creations, including the famous Mondrian- and Matisse-inspired designs from 1965, and the velvet bridal coat embroidered with the words “Love Me Forever Or Never”, an alternative to the white, billowing wedding dress.

#5. He revolutionized the way women dress His biggest regret may be that he didn’t invent denim, but the designer has revolutionized the way women dress in more ways than one can imagine. The prolific Saint Laurent was the creator of the still-iconic “Le Smoking”, the first-ever women’s tuxedo suit that quickly became a symbol of emancipation in the 1960s, an era when women wearing anything but dresses was deemed taboo. During his last haute couture show in 2002, the designer recalled: “I always wanted to put myself at the service of women. I wanted to accompany them in the great movement for liberation that occurred last century.” The constantly reinterpreted Le Smoking was the first of a string of eternal designs including safari jackets, color block Mondrian dresses, and the “chubby” from Monsieur Saint Laurent’s 1971 couture Libération/Quarante, or Scandal, collection.

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Movie Interviews

The turbulent love story behind yves saint laurent's revolutionary rise.

Susan Stamberg

Yves Saint Laurent works with a model at his Paris fashion house in 1965. A new film follows the designer's rise in the fashion world. Reg Lancaster/Getty Images hide caption

Yves Saint Laurent works with a model at his Paris fashion house in 1965. A new film follows the designer's rise in the fashion world.

In 2009, Forbes rated designer Yves Saint Laurent the "Top-Earning Dead Celebrity" of the year. (Surely a bittersweet distinction.) Now, Saint Laurent's success — and how it was shaped and fed by his lover and manager Pierre Berge — is the subject of the new film Yves Saint Laurent . In it, their relationship is both interactive and supportive. "Fashion is not a major art," Saint Laurent says in the film, to which Berge replies, "The way you do it, you have to be an artist."

A King Of Fashion

Costume designer Patricia Field, who put the ladies of Sex and the City into their Manolo Blahnik shoes, makes Saint Laurent sound like a chic Che Guevara: "I think he was one of the revolutionaries," she says.

"Le Smoking" — seen here in Saint Laurent's 1967 Spring-Summer collection — became the designer's signature piece for women. AFP/Getty Images hide caption

"Le Smoking" — seen here in Saint Laurent's 1967 Spring-Summer collection — became the designer's signature piece for women.

According to Field, Saint Laurent looped the pulse of his times into the fashions he designed. "Fashion is an ingredient in culture and art," she says. "And at his time, he was the king of it."

In 1966, Saint Laurent created "Le Smoking," a tuxedo jacket coupled with slim slacks — a pants suit for women. It was revolutionary, simple and elegant. In an archival interview , the designer described his approach: "I don't like [to] make a woman ... an abstract concept of the fashion," he said. "I don't like [to] say, 'You must wear that.' ... I am not a dictator."

Still, what Saint Laurent sent down the runway each season made the fashion world sit up and take notice. The movie re-creates a number of his fashion shows using gorgeous, super-skinny models draped, tied and zipped into actual Saint Laurent originals. The clothes were sprung from cold storage on loan, and handled with extreme care and curator's gloves for the shoots.

At His Lowest, 'He Always Managed To Create New Things'

"You were happy only twice a year" Berge says to Saint Laurent in the film, "spring and fall." That's when Saint Laurent was creating and showing his new collections. Otherwise, as the film makes clear, Yves Saint Laurent — a diagnosed manic-depressive — was very, very fragile.

"He was definitely very sick," says Jalil Lespert, the film's director. "Yves was not just like a diva or ... like a star, you know. He had this incredible struggle of his life against illness."

He was vulnerable, excitable and had major nervous breakdowns.

Pierre Niney plays Saint Laurent in the film. The 26-year-old actor says, "That's the most fascinating thing about that character, the fact that in the worst moment of desperation and unhappiness and pain, he always managed to create new things — masterpieces, actually."

To Niney and Lespert, Yves Saint Laurent's efforts are heroic and, as with many tormented artists, therapeutic.

"He was such a sensitive human being that it was painful to live, for him, everyday life," Niney says. "And the only getaway he found — and he found it really young, at maybe 15 or 16 — was to draw and to create."

The film depicts the relationship between Pierre Berge (Guillaume Gallienne, left) and Yves Saint Laurent (Pierre Niney) as both interactive and supportive. Thibault Grabherr/The Weinstein Company hide caption

The film depicts the relationship between Pierre Berge (Guillaume Gallienne, left) and Yves Saint Laurent (Pierre Niney) as both interactive and supportive.

'He Needed Pierre Berge,' And Berge 'Needed To Be Needed'

When Saint Laurent met and fell in love with Berge in the late '50s, they quite deliberately defined the roles they would play for the next 40 years. Saint Laurent was the artist; Berge was the ultimate manager-fixer who smoothed the way and kept the operation moving.

"Yves Saint Laurent couldn't deal with daily things, daily problems," Niney says. "He was really unable and handicapped, almost, with that. So he needed Pierre Berge, the businessman, dealing with money. And Pierre Berge, he needed to be needed."

Jalil Lespert agrees: "Pierre [Berge] is a mix of someone who [needs] to control — he's a kind of control freak — and also is very generous. He [needs] to help the one that he [loves]. He will do everything for him."

Including either staying out of the way or, conversely, getting out in front, when it was appropriate. In the movie, it's Berge who steps out of the limos first.

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Fashion History–Designer Yves Saint Laurent

This blog post is the beginning of a series on influential fashion designers.  

Yves Saint Laurent (August 1, 1936–June 1, 2008) was a French fashion designer born in French Algeria.  In 1953 he moved to Paris after winning a competition for young fashion designers and quickly found work with Christian Dior. After Dior's death in 1957, Saint Laurent was chosen as head designer of the haute couture fashion house at age 21. In 1960 Saint Laurent was drafted into the French army and fired from the House of Dior. Soon after, Saint Laurent established his own fashion house with the assistance of his partner, Pierre Berge. The house was successful, and some of Saint Laurent's most memorable styles include a refashioned tuxedo for women and his Mondrian collection of dresses based on artwork. In 1966 he was one of the first major designers to embrace ready-to-wear clothes with his Rive Gauche stores. Women flocked to purchase Saint Laurent designs at a lower price point. In 1983, Saint Laurent became the first living designer to be honored with an exhibition of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Saint Laurent died of brain cancer in 2008, shortly after a civil union with his longtime partner Pierre Berge. In addition to his fashion design, Saint Laurent embraced interior design and was an art collector during his lifetime. After his death, Berge auctioned some of their collection to raise over $300 million dollars for AIDS research.  

Some of the materials available on Saint Laurent at the Boston Public Library include: 

Yves Saint Laurent: A Biography  -  A well regarded general biography of the designer.

Debut: Yves Saint Laurent  - This book focuses on Saint Laurent's first year establishing his own fashion house.

The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé  - A book about Saint Laurent's homes, with views of some of the items later sold at the auction held after his death.

The Beautiful Fall  - An examination of the rivalry between Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, as well as Paris in the 1970s.

L'amour fou  (DVD French Widescreen) - A view of Saint Laurent's life through the eyes of his partner, Pierre Berge.

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Who was Yves Saint Laurent?

Image Credit: Museeyslparis

The name Yves Saint Laurent will always be celebrated within the fashion community. This name has been permanently carved into history. Some of the first designs by Yves Saint Laurent were considered highly controversial but revolutionary. Throughout his career, he designed some of the most iconic designs and styles that are still popular today.

At the same time, he was designing these early designs, he made eye-catching jewelry that complemented his work perfectly. The man was clearly ahead of his time and no matter how much criticism he got, the public always came around to praise his work.

Yves Saint Laurent’s Beginnings

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent, his full name, was born in Oran, Algeria, on August 1 st , 1936. He was a shy, timid boy who was often bullied in school. Even from a young age, Yves Saint Laurent had an eye for fashion. He would design dresses for his sister and mother as a young boy. He knew his calling from a very young age. After getting his education in Oran, Saint Laurent went to Paris to find a career in women’s fashion.

For a short while, Saint Laurent attended fashion school in Paris at the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture . During this time, he entered an international design contest, where he won the first prize. Through a connection of his father’s, Michael de Brunhoff (editor-in-chief of Vogue ), his sketches reached Christian Dior. Once Christian saw them, he instantly hired Yves as his own personal assistant.

Yves was just 17 years old and on the road to greatness. From that moment on, Saint Laurent’s career exploded and by the age of 21, after Christian Dior’s death, he became the lead designer at Dior.

Image Credit: Allure

Leaving Dior & the Beginning of YSL

After Christian Dior passed away in 1957, Saint Laurent became the head designer at Dior. His first collection was a great success. His designs were always unique and unpredictable. He revolutionized trousers for women, making them a fit for any occasion.

In 1960, Saint Laurent was drafted for the Algerian war. Soon after, he was diagnosed with depression and sent home only to receive the news that he had been fired from the House of Dior and replaced by Marc Bohan.

Yves Saint Laurent sued Dior, won the lawsuit and used the money he got to open his own design house, YSL, in 1961.

Image Credit: Tradesy

The YSL era

With YSL, Saint Laurent made a name for the brand designs like Le Smoking , the innovative female tuxedo that created the opportunity for the female power suit worn today. They also introduced women’s tailored tuxedos and popularized the beatnik look.

During the 1970s, the brand presented their jewelry collections that included bold and colorful pieces. YSL also made many runway pieces that were very popular and were considered progressive compared to other common wear collections.

In the 1980s, the YSL house was a widely recognized brand that was a force to be reckoned with in the fashion world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made a solo exhibition of his work and he was the first designer ever to achieve this in his lifetime. His ready-to-wear work was sold for $700 million to Gucci in 1999.

In 2001 he was honored as the Commander of the Légion d’Honneur and he sold his business completely and retired in 2002.

The house of Saint Laurent still exists and the only change is to its name which was changed to “Saint Laurent”. It is still the embodiment of the natural and traditional elegance that remains relevant within the modern world, as well as in fashion. No matter how much the trends change, this style is always present.

Saint Laurent was always able to show a way into the future, while at the same time reflecting on the past. He’s now considered one of the best designers of all time.

Yves Saint Laurent died in 2008 in Paris and today there are several movies about his work, as well as museums that display his designs and work. Check out Luxury Shops’ selection of affordable Yves Saint Laurent pieces today!

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Yves Saint Laurent: the battle for his life story

I n 2001, seven years before he died, Yves Saint Laurent agreed to be filmed by documentary-maker David Teboul for a rare behind-the-scenes look at his work. In the opening scene, watching a slideshow of family photographs, he grimaces: " J'ai joué le 'grand couturier' …" His voice is both sad and self-mocking; the voice of an old man looking back across a great distance at his frail 16-year-old self, head bowed over his lavishly dressed paper dolls.

Growing up in 1940s French Algeria, the young Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent dreamed of Paris: a bullied outcast at school, he escaped into fantasy at home – devouring his mother's fashion magazines, sketching endlessly, and predicting (in the safety of his adoring family circle, at least) a future of spectacular fame. 

Six decades on, the story of the little boy who played "grand couturier", and who grew up to become the century's most notorious fashion designer, shows no sign of losing its appeal. This year will see the release of two films based on his life: the first, actor/director Jalil Lespert's Yves Saint Laurent , is currently topping the French box office, charming audiences with its affectionately human portrait of the man behind the myth. In October the second – directed by Bertrand Bonello, best known for the controversial L'Apollonide , or House of Tolerance – will be released.

Pierre Bergé , Saint Laurent's partner, has granted Lespert access to his extensive archives and last year tweeted his outrage at the rival project: "I hold the moral rights over YSL's work… A trial on the cards?" Still, Bonello has his own heavyweight backer in Kering – the luxury conglomerate which now owns the Yves Saint Laurent label. His biopic will focus on Yves during the years when he accomplished his definitive works (the decade ending his triumphant Ballet Russes collection in 1976); and Bonello is playing up his version as the "unauthorised" story – one which will portray Yves's truth, rather than Pierre's.

It is the latest round in the battle for the designer's legacy. Since the late 90s some of the biggest names in fashion, from Lanvin's Alber Elbaz to Tom Ford , have spent periods at the label's helm; ultimately even the all-conquering Ford was defeated – simply, it seemed, not Yves enough. Saint Laurent himself died of brain cancer in 2008; four years later Hedi Slimane – first hired as a menswear designer back in 1996 – returned to the house and immediately shortened the label's name to Saint Laurent. The move provoked an immediate storm of protest, and a surprisingly long-lived backlash: last autumn, Parisian store Colette fell out with the label over T-shirts which bore the slogan: AIN'T LAURENT WITHOUT YVES . 

It's not hard to understand the fascination with the YSL story, a saga that blends wild public success with private suffering. Outwardly Saint Laurent led a charmed life. By the age of 18, he had won an international design competition (beating future rival Karl Lagerfeld ) and been hired by fashion's reigning Sun King, Christian Dior . Lespert's film begins shortly after, with Yves enthroned as Dior's crown prince. As played by Pierre Niney, he is at once violently demanding and intensely shy, pampered and secure – as he had been in Algeria – in a world of adoring women. But that sheltered, happy existence was soon to be shattered, with Dior's premature death in 1957 pushing his seemingly reluctant successor into the spotlight.

Saint Laurent became an object of immediate fascination: quiet, timid, with neatly parted schoolboy hair, anxious eyes lurking behind thick glasses and a frail body encased in a tight black suit. L'Express hailed him as France's latest enfant triste – another of the country's new wave of melancholy prodigies, like novelist Françoise Sagan and painter Bertrand Buffet. Womens Wear Daily 's correspondent was more specific, and less charitable – she saw "an ugly, ungainly, overgrown boy with thick glasses, and so horribly shy he couldn't take his eyes off the floor".

Charged, at 21, with safeguarding the future of the world's most successful fashion house, Saint Laurent began well: after his first, rapturously received collection, the International Herald Tribune 's correspondent reported: "Everybody was crying. It was the emotional fashion binge of all time." 

The rapturous reviews were soon followed by doubting ones, and two years later the House of Dior took advantage of Saint Laurent's military call-up to have their boy wonder replaced. Exiled from his Avenue Montaigne paradise, he fell apart and was admitted to mental hospital a bare three weeks after reporting for duty: a has-been at 24.

But Yves was not alone. Shortly after his Dior début in 1958, he had met Buffet's then-boyfriend, Pierre Bergé, and embarked on a personal and professional relationship which would endure to the end of his life. Bergé got Yves out of hospital and back to work, helping to set up the label whose three sensuously entwined initials would revolutionise Parisian fashion in the 60s, scandalise the world in the 70s and stamp themselves imperiously across the 80s.

From the outset, their roles were clear. Yves was the vulnerable, suffering artist and Pierre the fiercely controlling protector: a man who, in Lespert's film, is painfully aware of his public image – "the pimp who's found his all-star hooker". And in the frail Niney, the director has found an actor perhaps more like Saint Laurent than Saint Laurent himself ever was: tortured, intense, and yet endearingly childlike as he stumbles out of couture's disciplined universe into the liberated decadence of the 60s.

There are signs of a dark side, too; the jealous possessiveness of friends, the trembling fear of physical intimacy, the ability to work himself up into convenient hysterics at the slightest hint of pressure. And there are flashes of a strain of steel that few saw, or chose to see.  "Yves was a very strong person," says Susan Train, Condé Nast's Parisian bureau chief and a friend of both Saint Laurent and Bergé. "But he was much happier to keep Pierre out in front, making all the noise and doing the barking and nipping at people's heels. Yves depended enormously on Pierre, and he would never have been the success he was without him." 

That success took time: the first Yves Saint Laurent show, in January 1962, received a moderate response. But in the years that followed, his star soared. He created ideas that became overnight sensations and then timeless icons: the Mondrian-print shift dress, the Saharienne safari jacket, the Le Smoking trouser suit, Catherine Deneuve's Belle de Jour wardrobe. And in the mid-60s, his ready-to-wear Rive Gauche label became a global phenomenon, offering women an affordable slice of the YSL dream. The young, timid Yves had gone, replaced by a charming, seemingly assured man who was more than just a household name – like Coco Chanel, he had become his brand's most alluringly potent incarnation.

Magazines captured images of Yves at play: partying with Halston and Warhol in New York, making mischief with muses such as Betty Catroux and Loulou de la Falaise in Paris, and relaxing with the kif-smoking jet set in Marrakech. His dark suits disappeared, replaced by luxuriously louche kaftans, silk shirts, suede jackets and leather trenchcoats. And when he stepped in front of Jeanloup Sieff 's lens to promote his first men's fragrance in 1971, he went nude. His instructions were specific: "I want to create a scandal."

That image became a desperately effective mask. The paparazzi-friendly Yves who danced the night away in the 60s and 70s was high – on success, on fame and on an ever-changing cocktail of alcohol, acid and cocaine. Off camera there were fierce, increasingly violent rows with Pierre, who was struggling to keep both the business and Yves himself afloat. Ultimately Bergé would move out, unable to cope with Yves's utter self-absorption. As the years went on they both had other interests, other passions, other lovers (most notably Lagerfeld protégé Jacques de Bascher, whose affair with Yves added another dimension to the bitter Lagerfeld/Saint Laurent rivalry).

They continued to function as a symbiotic double act to the end. And while Pierre became an increasingly belligerent spokesperson, Yves flinched away from the public gaze, exhausted by the fashion treadmill and yet apparently unable to stop. There were rumours of illness, of Aids, and regular premature reports of his death. In his diaries Warhol recorded: "Loulou [de la Falaise] told us that YSL really was such a genius that he just can't take it, he has to take a million pills and the whole office gets so depressed when he's depressed…"

Finally Yves simply withdrew: Pierre commented that his partner had "entered depression as one enters a religion". And, as ever, Bergé took care of everything. "Everything I didn't have, he had," Yves said in 2001. "His strength meant I could rest on him when I was out of breath." 

Even at his most extroverted moments, Yves had been shielded by his cabal of intimates; towards the end, his world was reduced to his studio on Avenue Marceau, the couple's holiday home in Marrakech and the cloistered apartment on Rue de Babylone to which fewer and fewer people were admitted. At the same time, he signed his name to everything from sunglasses to bed linens to cigarettes – and licensed a range of era-defining fragrances (Opium, Jazz, Kouros), which would keep YSL's name firmly in the spotlight as the man behind the initials slowly faded away.

If the two new films are likely to reveal anything it is this: the man himself remains an enigma. Early in Lespert's film, he confides in Bergé: "You know, I'm not that nice." And you sense that not-niceness remains the largely untold part of the Saint Laurent story – the man who could cut friends and supporters out of his life without a backward glance, who averted his gaze from unpleasantness and who sheltered behind Bergé's aggressive energy just as completely as he sheltered behind his thick-lensed glasses. 

Yves was a genius, indulged and excused by a generation that believed that geniuses should live by different rules. In some respects that universe still endures in fashion, particularly in Paris: it's only been three years, after all, since John Galliano – another indulged Dior boy wonder – had his own startlingly public fall from grace.

Saint Laurent continued designing until 2002 – every show remorselessly measured against his past hits, and every final bow accompanied by the suspense of waiting to see whether he'd manage the short walk to the end of the runway. Lespert's film ends with Yves stumbling on to the runway, mouth slumped askew, eyes lost behind his glasses, his movement unsteady and uncertain.

Which of the films will be closer to the 'truth'? It is hard to say. Even in life, Yves Saint Laurent spent decades lost behind a screen of conjecture and rumour: his story has long been more legend than fact.

Yves Saint Laurent is released on 21 March

• Yves Saint Laurent
• The Observer

More on this story

Oscars race for best foreign-language film expands as Saint Laurent biopic sashays in

New year’s Yves: museums mark 60th anniversary of Saint Laurent debut

Cannes 2014 review: Saint Laurent - a smirking deification

Catherine Deneuve auctions off YSL haute couture outfits

Museums offer a peek into the secret world of Yves Saint Laurent

Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent co-founder and ‘true prince of culture’, dies at 86

Two Days, One Night review – small-town tale with a universal punch

Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit) review – Marion Cotillard gives a supremely intelligent performance

Yves Saint Laurent co-founder to sell off remainder of rare books collection

Two Days, One Night: The Dardenne brothers on making their ‘Belgian western’

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Fashion & Beauty

Yves Saint Laurent: A Biography

Author laurence benaïm.

This definitive portrait of the creative genius who transformed fashion is the first major English-language biography of Yves Saint Laurent since his death in 2008, featuring exclusive interviews of those who knew him best, by one of the most respected names in French fashion. Yves Saint Laurent's impact on fashion is legendary, yet he remains an enigmatic and compelling figure. Tracing the development of Saint Laurent's visionary work through his charmed yet tumultuous life, respected fashion writer Laurence Benaïm's newly translated and updated biography of the famed designer explores how this unassuming prodigy became a legendary, celebrated public icon who changed the face of fashion, style, and celebrity. Enriched by the author's exclusive interviews--from Saint Laurent's partner Pierre Bergé to family members, his atelier staff, and muses such as Catherine Deneueve, LouLou de la Falaise, and Paloma Picasso--this fascinating biography chronicles early glimpses of Saint Laurent's talent in Oran and his star trajectory, from leading the House of Dior at the age of twenty-one to his fall from grace and subsequent forging with Pierre Bergé, fashion's most enduring and successful professional partnership. In portraying the man behind the timeless icons of the Mondrian-print shift dress and the Le Smoking trouser suit--who partied with Warhol in New York and relaxed with the jet set in his Marrakesh hideaway--Benaïm powerfully illuminates both the glittering world of haute couture and the business empire that revolutionized the fashion industry.

About The Author

Journalist and fashion writer Laurence Benaïm has written many books including Lancel: Parisian Maison Since 1876 , Women in Dior: Portraits of Elegance , Dior: The New Look Revolution , and a biography of Yves Saint Laurent. She created the style supplement for the newspaper Le Monde and has contributed to Vogue and Marie Claire . She is an editorial adviser for Le Figaro .

• Publish Date: March 19, 2019
• Format: Hardcover
• Category: Design - Fashion & Accessories
• Publisher: Rizzoli Ex Libris
• Trim Size: 6 x 8-15/16
• US Price: $45.00
• CDN Price: $60.00
• ISBN: 978-0-8478-6339-6

Author Bookshelf: Laurence Benaïm

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Yves Saint Laurent

Born: Oran, Algeria, 1936 Died: Paris, France, 2008

Copyright © AFP / Jean-Régis Roustan / Roger-Viollet

With an early interest in fashion, Yves Saint Laurent was inspired by Moliere’s Ecole des Femmes, impressed by the costumes and sets.

In 1953 Saint Laurent won first prize in a competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat for a black cocktail dress.

Encouraging his aspirations, Saint Laurent travelled to Paris in 1955, enrolling in a professional cutting school for three months.

That same year, Saint Laurent’s drawing’s caught the attention of French Vogue editor, Michel de Brunhoff. Struck by the similarity of  Christian Dior ’s forthcoming collection, Brunhoff introduced Saint Laurent to Dior, who immediately hired him as an assistant.

In 1957 Christian Dior unexpectedly died of a stroke. His sudden death left Saint Laurent named as head designer of the house of Dior.

Saint Laurent presented his first collection in January 1958. At the time the house of Dior was responsible for nearly 50% of French fashion exports, making Saint Laurent’s success crucial for the French economy. The show featuring the “trapeze” look was deemed triumphant with the Parisians, proclaiming that Yves Saint Laurent had saved France.

Saint Laurent’s second collection for Dior saw drastically lowered hemlines and an emphasis on the décolletage. The following autumn/winter 59 collection saw skirts raised to the knees and belted waists.

In 1960 Saint Laurent was conscripted into the army. After only two months he was discharged due to ill health. Replacing Saint Laurent at Dior was  Marc Bohan .

The following year the house of Dior refused to reinstate Saint Laurent as head designer. Saint Laurent sued the label, eventually winning a share of the profits for the period during which he designed.

Announcing plans to open his own couture house, Saint Laurent partnered with Pierre Berge and J Mack Robinson. Saint Laurent presented his first collection in 1962. The press were encouraging; with Life magazine calling his designs “the best suits since  Chanel ”. In 1963 Diana Vreeland of American Vogue praised his collections, hailing it beautiful and charming. This started Vreeland’s continuous extolment of Yves Saint Laurent.

In 1966 Saint Laurent opened the first Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutique in Paris. The line successfully reinvented Saint Laurent’s couture style to ready-to-wear.

Throughout the following years Saint Laurent created pivotal trends and styles including the Le Smoking jacket from 1966, which heralded the arrival of androgynous elegance and the safari look in 1968, featuring the shirt dress and safari jacket.

In 1971 Saint Laurent shocked the public with the advertising campaign for the first YSL men’s fragrance. ‘Pour Homme’ featured Saint Laurent himself posing nude.

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In 1982 Saint Laurent celebrated the 20 th  anniversary of the house of Saint Laurent. Diana Vreeland personally presented him with the International Fashion Award of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

The following year the Metropolitan Museum of Art honoured Saint Laurent with a retrospective, “Yves Saint Laurent, Twenty-Five Years of Design”. The exhibition marked Saint Laurent as the first living designer to be honoured by the museum.

In 1985 Saint Laurent was awarded the medal of the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur at the Elysee palace. Saint Laurent was again honoured with another retrospective, put on by the Musee des Arts de la Mode, in 1986.

Saint Laurent sold his fashion house in 1993 to the pharmaceuticals company, Sanofi.

In 1998 the company held a 300-model fashion extravaganza at the final match of the football World Cup. The following year Saint Laurent’s timeless achievements were recognised by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, awarding him a Lifetime Achievement award.

That same year Gucci bought the YSL brand, appointing Tom Ford as designer of ready-to-wear, while keeping Saint Laurent as designer of the Haute Couture collections.

In 2002 Saint Laurent retired, choosing to spend most of his time in Marrakech, Morocco.

Tom Ford left the company in 2004. Succeeding Ford was Stefano Pilati,

In 2007, Saint Laurent was again honoured, being made a Grand Officer de la Legion d’honneur by French President Nicholas Sarkozy. The following year Saint Laurent died of brain cancer, aged 71.

In 2007, Yves Saint Laurent was honored with the rank of Grand officier de la Légion d’honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He and Pierre Bergé also established a foundation in Paris dedicated to preserving the history of the YSL brand, housing an impressive collection of 15,000 objects and 5,000 pieces of clothing.

Yves Saint Laurent passed away on 1 June 2008 due to brain cancer at his residence in Paris. Prior to his death, he and Bergé entered into a same-sex civil union in France. Knowing that Saint Laurent had only a short time left to live, Bergé and the doctor decided not to inform him of his impending death, believing he would not be strong enough to bear the news.

Saint Laurent’s funeral was held at Église Saint-Roch in Paris and was attended by notable figures, including former Empress of Iran Farah Pahlavi, Bernadette Chirac, Catherine Deneuve, and President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni. His ashes were scattered in the Majorelle Garden in Marrakech, Morocco, a place he co-owned with Bergé and often found solace and inspiration.

In February 2009, Christie’s held an auction of the couple’s extensive art collection, with the proceeds intended for a new foundation for AIDS research. The auction set records, including the sale of Matisse’s painting Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose, which broke the previous world record for a Matisse work. The subsequent auction included items from their Normandy villa, showcasing some of the designer’s personal belongings.

Yves Saint Laurent was posthumously rated the top-earning dead celebrity in 2009 by Forbes. His legacy continues to live on in the fashion world and beyond.

Yves Saint Laurent Biography

Written by Saxony Dudbridge

Saxony Dudbridge was one of the first contributors to the Catwalk Yourself project, Saxony studies International Fashion Marketing and she is responsible for our great History and Designers Biographies sections.

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Home » The Arts » Fashion » Yves Saint-Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent

YVES SAINT LAURENT: THE FIVE STAGES OF THE DESIGNER’S ART

Jéromine savignon on yves saint laurent’s design process.

From Jéromine Savignon, Yves Saint Laurent’s Studio: Mirror and Secrets (Paris: Actes Sud / Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, 2014) pp. 30-46. All smaller DVD images from David Teboul, Yves Saint Laurent: 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris (Éditions Montparnasse DVD, 2002). All larger DVD images from Loïc Prigent, Les dessins d’Yves Saint Laurent ( ARTE VOD , 2017).

YVES SAINT LAURENT: 1966 | 1982 Nicole de Lamargé; Brian Duffy, Vogue | Talisa Soto; Bruce Weber, Vogue

The studio of Yves Saint Laurent is a sanctuary. It is the sacred place where his glorifications of woman were ceremonially accomplished, the home of his idols, where he performed all the secret rites of the artist/artisan calling that was his one and only raison d’être . At once refuge and prison, ossuary and womb, it was that unique place where all the couturier’s creative powers converged. There, between dagger and poison, was the beating heart of Saint Laurent’s oeuvre.

Yves Saint Laurent studio

It all began with anguish. An irrepressible anguish. First of all, there was the extreme violence of a profession that he adored, yet which, implacably, four times a year, demanded the paralyzing descent into hell where everything must be called into question. There was the brutal aggression of the factitious novelty demanded by the press, waiting like a wild beast for its prey; and the unbearable cruelty of perfidious rumour, of the ferociously judging eye, the peremptory words that destroyed without seeing or understanding. And then, that suffocating terror of the void, the obsession and despair of the confrontation with the ‘inaccessible star’, that half-glimpsed ‘nothing’ that is ‘everything’. A blind immersion in darkness, yet with the instinctive knowledge that at the end of the night there would always be that burst of radiant light.

To survive the paralyzing, crucifying torture of anxiety, the only solution for Saint Laurent was Marrakech and the oasis of serenity he created with Pierre Bergé. Perhaps, for this son of the Mediterranean, this Proustian nostalgic for all the skies of Oran, and for the tender, joyous heavens of early childhood, it may have offered a sort of kindly analytic cure that on each occasion allowed him to murder the past while keeping faith with his origins. The sun of Morocco seemed to him even more beautiful than the sun of Algeria. He soaked in the soothing luxuriance of trees and flowers. ‘In Marrakech, I rest my mind clear. I feel good. On every street corner one sees groups that are impressive in their intensity, their relief, evoking Delacroix’s sketches, and which are in fact simply the improvisation of life.’ Solitude, indolence, sensuality, contemplation in the pursuit of a certain truth. Only the ‘Opium’ of Marrakech could lead him to the limits of the world, of his world.

OPIUM SKETCH & ITS REALIZATION IN AN ADVERTISEMENT, 1977 Yves Saint Laurent | Photo: Helmut Newton | Model: Jerry Hall

And then there was this intense happiness of a child marvelling at the knowledge that he had at last ‘discovered the precious message’. ‘How many times did I imagine myself powerless, fragile, desperate before the blackness of habit, and how many times was the curtain torn, offering me a glimpse of the unlimited horizons that have given me the greatest joys and, allow me to say this, real pride.’ His inhibitions swept away, Saint Laurent would now get to work at dizzying speed, never letting up until the collection was complete. Even doubt, if it arose, could be resolved by this dizziness. He drew, without pause, very fast, without thinking, as if in a state of grace. Extra-lucid. He called this the unpredictable ‘miracle of the moment’. ‘The line.’

Yves Saint Laurent fashion sketches from an earlier collection

On ream after ream of white paper, sketch followed sketch, like the magic flow of the imagination in automatic-writing mode. ‘When I pick up a pencil, I don’t know what I am going to draw. I start with a woman’s face and suddenly the dress follows, the clothing resolves itself. It is creation in its pure state, without preparations, without vision. When the drawing is finished, I am very happy.’ Twice a year, in early June and early December, Yves Saint Laurent would thus fly out to Marrakech for a fortnight and return with a little case in rust-red leather, monstrously stuffed with sketches. As the obligatory prelude, the ritual of this quest for the Grail in Morocco is where both the myth and the history of each Saint Laurent haute couture collection was first written.

On the Avenue Marceau, time stood still in the wait for the revelation of these precious and prodigiously eloquent sketches. ‘He put out so many ideas!’ recalls his faithful second, Anne-Marie Muñoz. ‘There was everything, and it all came out just like that.’ And, from the cabine des mannequins —‘those demoiselles of the salon’ as Helmut Newton called them—to the workshops on the second floor, everyone knew now that Monsieur Saint Laurent had ‘found it’ and everyone felt ready to follow him, in a state of total admiration and absolute trust, all the way. ‘Everything at this point is wonderful,’ wrote Saint Laurent. ‘For three weeks, with my workshop, my studio, I and the whole house live through a wonderful and exciting adventure. I am surrounded by a tremendous team that I adore and which feels the same way about me.’

The couture house, with Pierre Bergé at its helm, was like a vast conspiracy where everyone was determined to ‘spare’ him. The password? ‘LOVE’. Between effervescence and silence, feverish activity and fraught meditation, wild laughter and mischievous gaiety, the studio now became the magic stage, the intimate theatre of a five-act play that might be titled ‘Couture and Sentiments.’ Its tall door was usually ajar, open to the noises of the House. Under the authority of the studio director, Anne-Marie Muñoz, and the poetic, energizing gaze of Loulou de La Falaise, the premières and premiers d’atelier (workroom heads), mannequins cabine, embroiderers and favoured suppliers joined and succeeded one another in keeping with a protocol faithfully inspired by the House of Dior.

Pierre Bergé & Loulou de La Falaise, Yves Saint Laurent studio, Avenue Marceau

Still, if Saint Laurent’s need for calm and solitude became too imperious, he would close that door, posting words from Silvana Mangano written in his own hand: Comportatevi bene. Now only the density of the silence in the holy of holies manifested the couturier’s presence. Unless, that is, a few curious workers dared to indulge in the secret rite of the dormer window. In fact, few could resist the temptation. An oeil-de-boeuf window on the workshop floor afforded a view straight into the studio, revealing the figure of the couturier ‘bent over the table where he drew and wrote, half-child and half-monument, so distant and so present’.

ACT I: THE REVELATION OF THE DRAWINGS

The first act could be titled ‘The Revelation of the Drawings’. Since the return from Marrakech, they have been jealously hidden away in the studio chest. It falls to Anne-Marie Muñoz to summon the premiers d’atelier to this key rite. Emotions run high, impatience vying with curiosity, but all are certain that the paths along which they are about to be led are sure, that the new collection is already much more than a promise.

Yves Saint Laurent sketches for final couture collection (2001)

Doffing his white coat, as if to mark the importance of this ceremony of discovery, Monsieur Saint Laurent greets them surrounded by a mass of sketches in black and white, spread over tables, or in front of the great mirror, on the carpet. Here Marguerite Duras’s words about Saint Laurent come to mind: ‘Like a writer, every day he writes as if it were the first time, I could swear it. He does what we were waiting for, every year. I mean that he does what we did not know we were waiting for.’ ‘Noise and Silence.’ Boundless admiration for the abstraction embodied by his incisive line. Some may venture a remark about this or that expressive detail of a sketch. All are mesmerized, stunned. Still, choices now have to be made. The very private, one-on-one meetings with the workshop heads— flou (dresses and gowns) and tailleur (jackets and skirts)—will be decisive.

ACT II: THE ATTRIBUTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The precise moment of this second act—‘The Attribution of the Drawings’—may come immediately or be slightly delayed, but not too long: there are barely three weeks to go before the collection will be airborne. Wearing his white coat this time, the couturier waits, sitting at a worktable covered with dossiers of sketches, carefully organized into categories following the etiquette of haute couture: suits, evening dresses, day dresses, cocktail dresses, blouses, furs, etc.

Usually, this sequence is initiated by the oldest member of the tailleur workshop. Throughout the studio you can sense a potent emotion, a kind of microclimate where, in an alchemy of modesty and love, the couturier’s timidity melds with the certitudes of the visionary, and his expectancy, waiting to see how the collection will grow when the sketches are interpreted by all those with an intimate, inside knowledge of the Saint Laurent rhetoric. Now, looking at the drawings spread over a table, they can ask questions. ‘We knew that he was really expecting something from us, and gave us great freedom.’ It is a respectful dialogue.

Change a waistline. Soften a shoulder. Raise a collar. ‘You must choose what you prefer, Jean-Pierre.’ And so, choices are made. And if, in this orgy of drawn ideas, a look the couturier particularly liked seems to have been forgotten, he will gently insist, ‘Oh look, Jean-Pierre! Don’t you like that one?’ And, before going back up to his studio, Jean-Pierre adds the precious ensemble to the forty drawings already selected.

Next comes the crucial phase of making the first sketch of the model, in couture cloth for Tailleur items and butter muslin (cheesecloth) for the Flou . The cloth must capture the drawing exactly, and add life. This, as they used to say at Dior, is work for ‘partners’. From the secondes to the ‘little bees’, the whole workshop takes part, but it is the privilege of the premier d’atelier to translate into three dimensions the demanding precision of Saint Laurent’s line. The visual interpretation of the drawing is thus vital to ‘setting it up’ in such a way as to truly express the soul of the design. To an expert eye, the clarity of a Saint Laurent sketch says everything, in a few pencil lines: the nature and direction of the fabric, bias or with the grain, the movement, the hang, the sleeve properly squared, not too little and not too much, and even what cannot be put into words, simply from the way a hand rests on the hips. ‘It is a story without words.’ The rest is all a matter of métier .

Jean Pierre Derbord, premier d’atelier tailleur, Yves Saint Laurent studio

ACT III: THE DAY OF THE TOILES

Then comes ‘The Day of the Toiles’ a more theatrical third act, ‘moving, decisive and hard, too, for that is when I try to discover the secret of the collection,’ wrote Saint Laurent. Its choreography is highly ritualized. Sketch in hand, each premier takes his or her turn to come down to the studio accompanied by the chosen mannequin cabine to ‘pose’, ‘play the cloth’. From his architect’s table, Monsieur Saint Laurent watches for her entrance in the mirror, and it is a success if he recognizes his drawing. If he cannot acknowledge his paternity, the model is rejected, albeit with endless amounts of respect and kindness. ‘Monsieur Saint Laurent does not like to upset his premières who do not like to displease him.’ ‘Each collection has its secret. I try to find a way of recapturing the spirit of the cloth, of keeping in fabric the naivety of a toile, its beauty, its magical character. So, a bit of time goes by. The fabrics arrive and everything falls into place.’

ACT IV: THE FABRICS MAKE THEIR ENTRANCE

This fourth act, when ‘The Fabrics Make Their Entrance’, so that each toile may find the one that’s right for it, is the passionate and joyous intermezzo of this drama that is the birth a Saint Laurent collection. It is a unique moment of delectation, of religious sensuality, which can also be meditative and grave, when these fabrics which take over the studio are attributed. Crêpes, chiffons, precious silks, grains de poudre—Saint Laurent’s black gold—and all the wonderful, exclusive prints from Abraham, specially designed for the couturier by Gustav Zumsteg: ‘Gustav Zumsteg, my ally, my friend and my partner. I made my finest dresses in his fabrics. His talent was often an endless source of inspiration.’

Fabric gets everywhere. Rolls stand like colourful totems against the tables and in the window bays, swatches hang over chair backs, the bookshelves are a rainbow-coloured cornucopia of samples and the carpet a patchwork of widths of material and hangers feverishly thrown down for inspection. The Fabric God is in his heaven, and his bespectacled high priest is leading the worship, dressed in his white-coat vestment, given a muted echo by the toile that the mannequin ‘poses’ like a dress. A handful of acolytes attend and, naturally, the two vestals, ‘she who knows, watches over and observes’, Anne-Marie Muñoz, and Loulou, the ‘lightness of crystal’,’ with her catalysing instinct. Unrolling and feeling the heft of a crêpe, wondering about a black, assessing the hand, the feel of a grain de poudre, the swish of seductive chiffons.

Yves Saint Laurent is the magisterial high priest of this necessary rite of creating ‘effects’, and his cane is always near. He searches, handles the fabric until he knows what the results will be. Eyes trained on the mirror, he lets a sample of silk flow from the shoulders to the feet, sculpts the sketch of a dress directly on the model’s body, and eventually finds or recaptures its natural form. The eye examines, the silence speaks, the silence explodes. ‘The toile carries in it the Magic of the drawing. One must be very attentive to the toile before choosing the fabric in which it will be made in order to recapture the Magic of the sketch.’ And Monsieur Saint Laurent decides. When a fabric has finally been found that seems most likely to meet and not betray the imperative expectations of the toile, a sample is cut, pinned on, and everything goes back to the workshop, with the drawing, for the final phase.

ACT V: THE SECRET BIRTHS OF THE DESIGNS

To perform, in the allotted time, this fifth act, that of the ‘Secret Births of the Designs’, the flou, the tailleur, and all the workshops, drunk on the knowledge that they are ‘the architects and masons of Monsieur Saint Laurent’s taste’, start working with their fabrics in order to initiate the metamorphosis of the toiles into clothing: to create the miracle. Working with chalk, tape measure, needle and pins, snipping with squeaking scissors, they must find the proportions, volumes and energy of the fabric. Here the millimetre is the unit of measurement and the couturier’s sketch the absolute template. The process is a dogged pursuit of perfection in an almost mute effervescence. Here, everything whispers and works in a confident and hushed solidarity, beyond words. The murmuring silence of the workshops is almost like that of ‘long-united lovers who no longer need to explain themselves to understand each other’.

Yves Saint Laurent studio, Atelier flou

As soon as a dress is judged sufficiently developed to be put before the Grand Jury, premières and secondes, full of pride and anxious doubts, escort their mannequin to the holy of holies for a first, tense judgement. ‘Will he recognize his drawing?’ Thus begin hours and days of toing and froing between workshops and studio, a long processional ballet of fittings, each one a drama of love and anxiety. The rigour is infinite, the eye of Monsieur Saint Laurent as pitiless as it is tender when it comes to judging the fit between the dress and his dream. ‘I expect everything of my workshops, of their exquisite and immaculate work. That is what couture is all about!’

In the great mirror of the studio, Amalia, a cardinal character in our play, moves hieratically forward in a narrow black skirt and a blouse in white organdy. Monsieur Saint Laurent watches. Silence. And the model, who does not yet know what this silence means, moves impassibly on her high heels, with the lofty grace of a goddess. In the language of the Maison, ‘She has the star’. The première and the two guardian angels, Anne-Marie and Loulou, are also studying the mirror, holding their breath. Now the oracle speaks: ‘It’s beautiful, all this white! It’s a divine blouse! But the skirt… a bit tighter at the bottom, I think.’ ‘More restricted?’ ‘Yes, that’s it. I can see it now.’ He smiles reassuringly and the première stands. ‘Now we’re going to finish and fine-tune a bit. It’ll be right tomorrow’.

Other times—most often— the ecstasy is immediate, and recognition likewise. ‘It’s a dream! Esther, what a pretty dress that is! So light! ‘Thank you, sir.’ You aren’t too tired? ‘It’s all right, sir, we’ll manage.’ ‘That is ravishing, my dear Georgette!’ On one occasion, by grace or by magic, by daring to add honey-coloured envol at the bottom of the ebony sheath that had been asked for, the inspired talent of a première revealed, at the fitting, an unexpected truth of model no. 87 in the spring-summer 2001 haute couture collection: ‘Colette! I asked you for a ‘sausage’ (couture jargon for a sheath dress) and you have made me a masterpiece! It’s sensational! It’s quite marvellous, my dear Colette! That skirt! That ruffle… Extraordinary!’  Monsieur Saint Laurent takes his première in his arms. The emotion spreads and everyone applauds.

Alek Wek, Yves Saint Laurent studio

‘I do not think,’ said Saint Laurent in one of his Saint Catherine’s day speeches, ‘I do not think that we are ever more fascinated, dazzled, astonished than when we are working in front of the big mirrors of the studio on a model and everything is transformed, takes flight in another way, ending in gaiety, admiration of this perfection. We do not say it, but you have won. And you forget how hard you have had to work in your workshops.’ ‘My children, my talents beyond talent, my tendernesses, my queens, my kings and my princesses,’ he also said to these men and women he loved like a family, and as the best workshop in the world.

And, for Yves Saint Laurent, after the headiness of triumph on the podium and the ovation that greeted no. 87, statuesquely set off by supermodel Alek Wek, the drama came to an end, with a heart-rending smile over that infinitely cruel emptiness that leaves you feeling like an orphan when it’s all over. Post coitum anima tristis est said the Ancients. So many fears, sleepless nights and dazzling triumphs disappearing into ‘the cold night of oblivion’! All these ideas that shot forth like meteorites, fatally doomed to ‘disappear like the ones before, like those to follow’ when one was dreaming of eternal creation: ‘What a thing it is, for those who really desired only that!’ Might not the bitter taste of that frustration have also helped orient Saint Laurent towards the ardent, instinctive quest for his style? That conquest of ‘the place and the formula’, as Arthur Rimbaud would have said, is probably one of the most intimate truths of the studio.

Yves Saint Laurent, Couture, SS 2001 | Photos courtesy of Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT: TWO BOOKS & A DVD

Alicia Drake, The Beautiful Fall

Jéromine Savignon, Yves Saint Laurent’s Studio

Yves Saint Laurent DVD 2 Features

YVES SAINT LAURENT IN ‘MARA, MARIETTA’

From ‘mara, marietta’ part three chapter 8.

̶  One can be original and still be perfect, Sprague. Look at Saint Laurent. ̶  The imperfection in his life outweighs the perfection in his art. So long as the net result is imperfection, the art lives. ̶  Rather curious, your theory! And besides, you haven’t defined perfection. ̶  It’s the idea of closure, completeness. Nature can afford to be perfect, because it’s constantly in a state of flux. There’s always an opening for the new. Man cannot, because civilization seeks fixity and permanence. So if you add closure into the mix, it’s a recipe for death. Perfection in art is deadly. ̶  A rather grandiose statement, don’t you think? ̶  No. Just compare Cabanel and Manet. The Birth of Venus is perfection…

Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus, 1863

… Olympia is imperfection. Manet’s painting is far more interesting.

̶  I defend perfection in the name of craft, not art. Being well-trained gives you the means to express your originality. And if you don’t have any, at least what you make will be well-made. ̶  True.

What exactly have I got against perfection? That schooling and I never got along? That I prefer the wildflower to the cultivar? The stray cat to the lapdog?

Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863

MARA, MARIETTA: A LOVE STORY IN 77 BEDROOMS

A literary novel by richard jonathan.

Available from AMAZON (paper | ebook) & iBOOKS, GOOGLE PLAY, KOBO & NOOK (see LINKS below)

Yves saint laurent: thirteen fashion looks.

YVES SAINT LAURENT, RIVE GAUCHE, 1979 Mira Tibblin | François Lamy, Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT, RIVE GAUCHE, 1987 Christy Turlington | Patrick Demarchelier, Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT, RIVE GAUCHE, 1989 Suzanne Lanza | Neil Kirk, Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT, 1962 Irving Penn, Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT, 1964 Jean Shrimpton | David Bailey, Vogue

Yves Saint Laurent, Couture, 1969 | David Bailey, Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT, RIVE GAUCHE, 1994 Carla Bruni | Kim Knott, Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT, RIVE GAUCHE, 1994 Kate Moss | Andrew Lamb, Vogue

YVES SAINT LAURENT, RIVE GAUCHE, 1987 Cindy Crawford | Patrick Demarchelier, Vogue

Yves Saint Laurent, Broadway suit, 1978

YVES SAINT LAURENT, RIVE GAUCHE, 1977 Willie Christie, Vogue

Yves Saint Laurent, 1976 | Catherine Deneuve | Oliviero Toscani, Vogue

Yves Saint Laurent, 1970 | Catherine Deneuve

YVES SAINT LAURENT, 1936-2008 Juergen Teller

MODELS & DOGS: ONLY LOVE NO BULLSHIT

ALEXANDER McQUEEN: HORN OF PLENTY | ELIZABETH HOW | SARABANDE

ALEXANDER McQUEEN: PLATO’S ATLANTIS | THE GIRL WHO LIVED IN THE TREE | VOSS

Fashion in ‘mara, marietta’, click on an image to go to the corresponding page.

Sonia Rykiel

Vivienne Westwood

Yohji Yamamoto

Models and Dogs

Alexander McQueen – 1

Alexander McQueen – 2

Christian Lacroix – Part 1

Christian Lacroix – Part 2

Christian Lacroix – Part 3

• References and Bibliography

Mara, Marietta: A Love Story in 77 Bedrooms is available from these retailers:

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Perspectives Fashion

Yves saint laurent: when fashion meets art.

On the 40th anniversary of Yves Saint Laurent’s exhibition at The Met, we revisit the connection between fashion and art.

Aurola Wedman Alfaro

Dec 14, 2023

Listen to this article

Standing in front of Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic painting  Irises  (1890) at The Met, I am captivated by the calming qualities of the thick brushstrokes, the flowing lines, and the coolness of the faded violet hues. An interpretation of Van Gogh’s irises then comes to mind, one where the petals are crafted with overlapping sequins and the leaves are demarcated with precise rows of cornflower blue bugle beads.

Yves Saint Laurent (French (born Algeria) Oran 1936–2008 Paris). Ensemble , spring/summer 1988. Silk, glass, metal, pearls. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Friends of The Costume Institute Gifts, 2019 (2019.93a–c)

The piece, a jacket designed by Yves Saint Laurent for his spring–summer 1988 collection, was embellished with pearls, ribbon, and 250,000 sequins in twenty-two colors. It took the Maison Lesage more than six hundred hours to hand embroider the garment. The collection featured an equally detailed jacket inspired by Van Gogh’s sunflowers. It was paired with an emerald-green pencil skirt and modeled by Naomi Campbell under the warm glow of a chandelier on a runway surrounded by cameras.

Yves Saint Laurent spring-summer 1988 runway show. Photograph courtesy of Guy Marineau © Guy Marineau

Three decades later, a Saint Laurent iris jacket was sold at auction for 175,500 euros , while one of four sunflower jackets sold for 382,000 euros . Beyond raising staggering sums at auction, these jackets raise a question: Can Saint Laurent’s designs be considered art, too?

Boundaries often blur in the realm of art. We look at art through a subjective lens—is a piece beautiful or unappealing?—and consider its historical context—was it revolutionary at the time, even if it appears mundane now? What distinguishes art from craftsmanship? How do we determine what qualifies as art, and where does fashion fit on that spectrum? With these questions in mind, I embarked on an exploration of Saint Laurent’s career and history with The Met, while also visiting six exhibitions in Paris that showcased the designer’s work in conversation with art.

Throughout his career, Saint Laurent transported artworks from walls to bodies. This remarkable endeavor began in 1965 when Saint Laurent was reading Michel Seuphor’s book, Piet Mondrian, Life and Work . The purity of Mondrian's simple lines and color blocks resonated deeply with Saint Laurent, inspiring him to create a collection of twenty-six designs that mirrored the principles of Neoplasticism. With strategic darts and seams, he transformed abstract paintings into three-dimensional cocktail dresses that maintained geometric alignment on the body.

Yves Saint Laurent cocktail dress, homage to Piet Mondrian, autumn-winter 1965. Photograph: TopFoto 

An immediate success, the Mondrian collection paved the way for Saint Laurent’s art-inspired garments. Although designers Michèle Rosier, John Kloss, and milliner Sally Victor also employed color blocking on their dresses and hats , it was the Mondrian collection that brought global attention to the designer and the painter. 

Having lived in Paris for more than 20 years, Mondrian died as a relatively unknown artist in 1944 in New York. Apart from two posthumous gallery exhibitions and a single lithograph given to the Musée National d’Art Moderne [ 1 ], Mondrian’s work was unrepresented in France’s collections. Following the attention generated by Saint Laurent’s collection, Mondrian’s first retrospective took place at the Musée de L’Orangerie in 1969.

While Saint Laurent’s art-inspired garments played a significant role in his career, his legacy extends beyond these artistic homages. He is remembered for defying gender norms with his designs, particularly through trouser suits for women called “Le Smoking.” First presented in 1966, the tuxedo caused outrage. Many deemed it inappropriate for women and that belief led to many hotels and restaurants denying admission to women who chose to wear them. Famously, when New York socialite Nan Kempner was denied admission to La Côte Basque due to her Saint Laurent tuxedo, she removed the pants and defiantly entered the restaurant, wearing the blazer as a mini-dress.

Saint Laurent’s tuxedo known as Le Smokin, autumn-winter 1966. Photograph courtesy of Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris ©Yves Saint Laurent

In the realm of high fashion, Diana Vreeland, the influential former editor of Vogue and consultant for The Met’s Costume Institute , stood as a towering figure. Initially, Vreeland wasn’t convinced of Yves Saint Laurent’s superlative talent, despite sensing great freshness and style in his debut collection at the House of Dior in 1958. [ 2 ]

The young designer’s disregard for the status quo, evident in designs featuring exposed breasts and sheer fabrics, raised eyebrows. He seamlessly drew inspiration from street styles, blurring the lines between the everyday and haute couture. Vreeland remarked, “Yves Saint Laurent has a fifty-fifty deal with the street. Half of the time he is inspired by the street and half of the time the street gets its style from Yves Saint Laurent.” [ 3 ]

By 1983, however, Vreeland’s perception had shifted. Having witnessed the designer’s continuous innovation and impact on fashion, she joined the club of those who employed the term “genius” to describe Saint Laurent. For the first time in its forty-six-year history, The Costume Institute presented a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of a living designer, and Vreeland chose Saint Laurent for this prestigious honor. In the exhibition catalogue , she declared, “He is without any question the leader in all fashion today.”

Exhibition views of Yves Saint Laurent: Twenty-Five Years of Design held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 14, 1983 to September 2, 1984. 

The exhibition held at The Met showcased one hundred fifty garments set against colorful backdrops, taking viewers on a riveting journey through Saint Laurent’s prolific career. A collision of dreams and reality, the exhibition mixed the lavish with the practical, featuring dresses worn by movie stars alongside tuxedos worn by Saint Laurent’s younger clientele. Among the highlights were a row of Mondrian-inspired dresses, a theatrical cape of ostrich feathers, a beige safari-style jacket, a harlequin dress made of satin patchwork, alluring translucent pieces, and loose unassuming wool peacoats—each piece distinct yet unmistakably Saint Laurent. 

This duality in his design practice was often attributed to Saint Laurent’s understanding of the times as well as the desires and needs of his clientele. The French actress Catherine Deneuve, who wore his designs on- and offscreen, wrote in the exhibition catalogue  that Saint Laurent created for women leading double lives: “His day clothes help a woman confront the world of strangers. They permit her to go everywhere without drawing unwelcome attention [...] In the evening, when a woman chooses to be with those she is fond of, he makes her seductive.”

Yves Saint Laurent and his models at the presentation of Saint Laurent’s autumn-winter 1960 collection at the House of Dior. Photograph: TopFoto 

The connection between fashion and art has only strengthened over time as more museums around the world curate and present costume exhibitions. In 2022, Yves Saint Laurent Aux Musées , a simultaneous exhibition hosted at six leading Parisian cultural institutions, showcased Saint Laurent's talent, creative process, and lifelong fascination with art. At the Centre Pompidou , the Mondrian dresses were displayed alongside the artist’s iconic paintings. Similarly, at the Musée National Picasso-Paris , the Portrait de Nusch Éluard (1937) seemed to come alive when paired with Saint Laurent’s Homage to Pablo Picasso, a playful black-and-blue jacket.

Installation view of Yves Saint Laurent Aux Musées, 2022 at the Musée Picasso Paris. Photograph © Aurola Wedman Alfaro. Left: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). Portrait de Nusch Éluard , 1937. Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm. Musée Picasso-Paris © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Right: Yves Saint Laurent (French, 1936–2008). Homage to Pablo Picasso jacket, autumn-winter 1979. Blue, black and ivory wool. © Yves Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent’s designs inspired by Marcel Proust’s characters from À la recherche du temps perdu ( In Search of Lost Time ) were exhibited in the clock room at the Musée d’Orsay . At the Musée du Louvre , a dazzling Gallery of Apollo competed for the public’s attention against Saint Laurent’s gold-embroidered jackets , one of them once worn by Vreeland. The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris explored the reciprocal relationship between the couturier and modern art, showing how their collection inspired his work, and how he was also a source of inspiration for works like Andy Warhol’s Portraits of Yves Saint Laurent (1972).

Finally, at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris , housed in the designer’s former couture studio, visitors could marvel at one of the sunflower jackets and gain insight into the designer’s creative process. An astonishing number of sketches stood as proof of Saint Laurent’s prolific output. In preparation for his first Dior collection, for instance, he drew six hundred sketches in just fifteen days. Saint Laurent acknowledged that his creations didn’t come without feelings of anguish, “waiting for three weeks out of four for the click that sets my fantasies in motion toward their appointment with the physical world. It doesn’t seem like a gift, but I know it is.” [ 4 ]  

Installation view of Yves Saint Laurent Aux Musées, 2022 at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Toiles (‘muslins’) © Yves Saint Laurent Photograph © Aurola Wedman Alfaro. 

Saint Laurent initiated dialogues between art and fashion, and laid the foundation for contemporary brands that continue to create art-inspired looks. Forty years after The Costume Institute presented its retrospective, museums worldwide continue to showcase Saint Laurent’s creations, placing his work alongside the masterpieces that inspired him. Can we then consider Saint Laurent’s work that of an artist? Are his designs on par with fine art?

Saint Laurent did not carry grandiose pretensions; he never likened himself to Van Gogh or Picasso through his interpretation of their works. He was a student of culture and an avid art collector, adorning his home with works by De Chirico, Cézanne, Goya, Picasso, and Mondrian. He emphasized that his homages were the result of a profound admiration of the art form: “I didn’t copy them—who would venture to do that? I wanted to weave connections between the painting and the clothing.” [ 5 ]

Integrating art into his designs stemmed from a place of genuine admiration. In a similar vein to how we curate our lives through social media, sharing snapshots of things we love, declarations of our values, and highlights of our travels, Saint Laurent curated his worldview and expressed it through his chosen medium—clothing. His subversion of gender norms resulted in tuxedos for women, his passion for Proust materialized in designs inspired by his characters, and his love for painting found its way into the motifs of his clothing.

“My weapon is the way I look at my times and the art of my times.” 

This process was perhaps part of his own learning journey, a means of better understanding the artists Saint Laurent admired by applying their teachings to his own craft. He understood that this was his zone of genius. “My weapon is the way I look at my times and the art of my times,” he wrote in Yves Saint Laurent and Art . He immersed himself in real and imaginary worlds—and from these, he emerged with tangible designs that embodied the essence of wearable art.

Saint Laurent made his designs accessible to a wider clientele through his ready-to-wear line, and the success of his Mondrian dresses led to their replication by mass manufacturers, resulting in abundant inexpensive copies. Whether or not it was his intention, Saint Laurent expanded the reach of artworks beyond the confines of museum walls and into human lives. At the very least, he challenged perceptions by demonstrating that women, irrespective of their race or class, deserved to wear works of art. Saint Laurent’s understanding of women, art, and the zeitgeist played a role in his ability to connect with his audience and craft designs that tapped into their aspirations, presenting them with the extraordinary opportunity to wear something beyond their wildest dreams.

Yves Saint Laurent (French, 1936–2008). ‘Homage to My House’ jacket, spring-summer 1990. Organza embroidered with gold and rock crystal. Photograph courtesy of Guy Marineau © Guy Marineau

[1] Madison Cox, Stephan Janson, and Mouna Mekouar, eds., Yves Saint Laurent and Art (New York : Thames & Hudson, 2022), 25.  Return

[2] Diana Vreeland et al., Yves Saint Laurent . (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art : Clarkson N. Potter, 1983).  Return

[3] Ibid.  Return

[4] Ibid.  Return

[5] Yves Saint Laurent, “Mon Dialogue avec L’Art” in Yves Saint Laurent : Dialogue avec L’Art . (Paris: Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent, 2004), 9.  Return

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Yves Saint Laurent: A Biography Hardcover – March 19, 2019

• Print length 544 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Rizzoli Ex Libris
• Publication date March 19, 2019
• Dimensions 6.38 x 1.79 x 9.31 inches
• ISBN-10 0847863395
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rizzoli Ex Libris; Translation edition (March 19, 2019)
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