A young Yves Saint Laurent with one of his sketches

Born Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent in Oran, French Algeria in 1936, Saint Laurent showed an interest in fashion early on. In 1954, the 18-year-old Saint Laurent won the third prize in the dress category of the prestigious International Wool Secretariat competition. Impressed by the quality of his sketches and his knowledge of pattern cutting and sewing, Christian Dior hired him soon afterwards.

After the death of Dior in 1957, Saint Laurent became the main designer for the couture house. His first collection, at just 21, was lauded by the French and international press. The New York Herald Tribune declared it “The best Dior collection ever seen.”

Saint Laurent’s youth was never an obstacle to his brilliance or technical ability. It did, however, mean that he had to join the French army, then operating under a conscription regime. Shortly afterwards, Saint Laurent was hospitalised for depression. Marc Bohan replaced him at Dior, precipitating the creation of Saint Laurent’s own couture house in collaboration with Pierre Bergé.

Saint Laurent showed his first collection under his own name in 1962 30 bis rue Spontini, Paris. Rejecting traditional bourgeois aesthetics, Saint Laurent showed an oversized blazer with gold buttoning. In 1982, he was awarded the International Award by the CFDA.

Saint Laurent died in June 2008, at 71 of brain cancer. His ashes were scattered in Morocco, a country which provided him with an endless source of inspiration. The sale of his art collection in February 2009 raised £333 millions, a record for a private collection.

The YSL Brand History

Despite his sometimes precarious health, Saint Laurent continued to design both the Pret à Porter and Couture lines until 1998, when Alber Elbaz took the reins of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, YSL’s pioneering ready-to-wear label which was created in 1966. Elbaz was shortly followed by Tom Ford who injected a darker, more provocative vibe to the brand. Saint Laurent sometimes felt alienated by Ford’s aggressive marketing. Both designers, as well as Heidi Slimane, were also responsible for the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Menswear label created in 1969.

In 2004, Saint Laurent fully retired. Stefano Pilati has brilliantly taken over the design reins, ceaselessly reinventing the house codes and introducing the brand to the very marketable world of it-bags, with the creation of the Muse in 2005. In 2008, Pilati added “a permanent, season-less and sharply priced collection of YSL essentials dubbed Edition 24” to the Saint Laurent family.

A sharp and sexy look by YSL

The brand started producing perfumes in 1964 with Y. Opium debuted in 1977. Like most fashion houses, they have diversified their source of incomes with cosmetics and jewelery. Recently, the YSL marketing has caused quite a stir with the wide and quasi-viral distribution of their seasonal manifestos. The spring/summer 2010 menswear show was introduced by a short movie shot by Samuel Benchetrit.

Notable Yves Saint Laurent Collections

Saint Laurent’s travels and love of arts were two key inspirations for his collections.

● The Mondrian collection, Winter 1965, introduced a simple shift-dress inspired by the painters’ modern aesthetics and use of primary colours and lines. Mondrian later inspired a jacket in the Summer 1980 collection.

● Fall-Winter 1966 collection introduced both Pop Art and the Smoking to the world of fashion. In subsequent years, Saint Laurent also used the work of Van Gogh or Picasso as inspiration.

● The African collection, Spring/Summer 1967 was described by Harper’s Bazaar as “a fantasy of primitive genius shells and jungle jewelry clustered to cover the bosom and hips, latticed to bare the midriff”.

● The 1971 Forties Collection, inspired by the sharp shoulders and platform shoes characteristic of 1940s fashion was not well received.

● The Ballets Russes collection, presented in July 1976, was described by Saint Laurent as may be “not the best, but certainly the most beautiful”. The New York Times echoed the feeling : “A revolutionary collection which will change the course of fashion in the world”. The models wore fur hats and heavy belted dresses in rich colours.

Iconic Yves Saint Laurent Items

● The Smoking: Women started wearing pant-suits before Saint Laurent. It was however mostly a sulfurous act of sexual ambiguousness, such as worn by Marlene Dietrich. The Smoking tux was created in 1966 and became an instant hit among YSL muses, including Catherine Deneuve. Worn with nothing underneath, it became a troubling image of feminism. Pamela Golbin, curator at Paris’ Fashion Museum declared that “In 1967, the smoking was, well, it was an explosion, it was a revolution! How could a woman take possession of this outfit which symbolizes masculinity itself.”

● The see-through blouse, worn on bare skin, was created in 1968, in the midst of the French sexual and ideological revolution.

Iconic model Veruschka in YSL

● The Safari jacket (1968), as worn by Veruschka in a Franco RuBartelli Vogue photoshoot. Even though it was not the foreseen star of the collection, it rapidly became a best-seller.

Also noteworthy are his jumpsuits, leather jackets, coats and thigh-high boots.

The Lasting Impact of Saint Laurent

Open your closet. Shop the high street. Look at the latest collection. Every fashionwhere you look, the YSL inheritance is present. It might be a variation on the “Smoking” or a see-through blouse. It’s the very fact that women can wear a “Smoking” or see-through blouse. Saint Laurent was the first designer to use black models on the runway. He was also one of the first to use very thin models. He introduced street-wear into high-fashion wear.

Saint Laurent not only revolutionised fashion, he also accompanied the feminist movement. His first creations are concomitant to the fight for general access to the pill and the feminisation of the workforce. With his designs, Saint Laurent allowed more freedom of movement while developing a simpler aesthetic.

At a press conference to announce his retirement, Saint Laurent explained his own view of fashion: “I have believed for a long time now that fashion is not merely there to embellish women. I believe it is also a mean to reassure them, to give them confidence, to enable them to assert themselves.”