Yves Saint Laurent

Fashion designer

  • Born: August 1, 1936
  • Place of Birth: Oran, Algeria
  • Died: June 1, 2008
  • Place of Death: Paris, France

Education: École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture

Significance: Yves Saint Laurent was an Algerian-born French fashion designer. He became known for his fashion brand, Yves Saint Laurent, which changed the way women dressed. He popularized the pantsuit and tuxedo for women and concentrated on both couture and ready-to-wear styles. Saint Laurent retired in 2002 and died in 2008.

Background

Yves Saint Laurent was born Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent on August 1, 1936, in Oran, Algeria. He was the son of Charles and Lucienne Andrée Mathieu-Saint-Laurent. His father worked as an insurance broker and lawyer. Saint Laurent had two younger sisters.

Saint Laurent was not very athletic as a child but enjoyed swimming. He became enamored with theater and fashion at an early age. He began designing clothes when he was in his teens and dressed his mother, who hired a seamstress to make his designs. Saint Laurent's father assumed that his son would follow in his footsteps and study law, but Saint Laurent wanted to pursue a career in fashion. He moved to Paris, France, and briefly attended École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture. He grew bored with school and entered a design competition. His sketch of a cocktail dress won the first prize in the International Wool Secretariat contest.

Fashion designer Christian Dior noticed the design, which aligned with his own style, and hired Saint Laurent as his assistant. The two spent the next few years working very closely on fashion designs. After Dior's sudden death in 1957, the twenty-one-year-old Saint Laurent became the head designer of the Christian Dior fashion house. He went from an assistant to the head of a multimillion-dollar company.

In January 1958, Saint Laurent introduced his first collection for the Dior label. It was based on a flared trapeze dress and was well received. The young designer built a name for himself in the next two years. However, his 1960 collection of beatnik-inspired turtlenecks and leather jackets was not as successful.

In September 1960, the French army called Saint Laurent to serve in the Algerian war. A few weeks into his service, he fell ill and was hospitalized. In October, Dior replaced Saint Laurent with Marc Bohan, who had served as Saint Laurent's assistant. The army discharged Saint Laurent to a Paris clinic in November.

Life's Work

When Saint Laurent regained his health, he demanded that Dior reinstate him, but the fashion house refused. Saint Laurent sued the company and won about $140,000 in early 1961. That fall, Saint Laurent decided to open his own fashion house, Yves Saint Laurent, with his partner, Pierre Bergé, who oversaw the company's finances.

Saint Laurent's first collection was shown in January 1962. It featured revisions and interpretations of his earlier designs for Dior. A few years later, he designed a ready-to-wear line called Rive Gauche. The concept was foreign to couture fashion designers at the time, who did not specialize in ready-to-wear designs. He designed not only women's fashions but expanded into menswear, perfumes, cosmetics, and costume designs. One of his best-known designs was Le Smoking Suit, a pantsuit for women that featured a tuxedo jacket. He gave the suit feminine lines and touches. In the years that followed, he reinterpreted the tuxedo suit in both pants and dress form.

Another part of the company produced Yves Saint Laurent's fragrance line. However, it caused several controversies for the designer. In 1971, Saint Laurent was featured nude in an advertisement for one of his men's colognes. The naming of one of the company's perfumes, Opium, caused a stir when Saint Laurent was accused of condoning and glamorizing drug use. Later a lawsuit in the early 1990s forced Saint Laurent to change the name of a perfume he had planned to call Champagne.

To remain profitable throughout the years, Saint Laurent and Bergé sold parts of the business to other companies several times. In 1993, the French pharmaceutical company Elf Sanofi bought 57 percent of the fashion house. Gucci Group purchased Yves Saint Laurent's cosmetics, perfume, and ready-to-wear businesses from Sanofi in 1999. Sanofi retained the haute couture line, which Saint Laurent and Bergé continued to run.

Saint Laurent continued to design his couture collection until he retired in 2002. His retirement marked the end of the couture arm of the brand. Bergé focused on other ventures. Gucci continued to run other parts of the company with Tom Ford as creative director until 2004, when Ford's assistant Stefano Pilati took over for him.

Saint Laurent died of brain cancer on June 1, 2008. Pilati remained creative director of Yves Saint Laurent until 2012 when Hedi Slimane replaced him. Slimane rebranded the ready-to-wear line as Saint Laurent Paris. In 2016, Anthony Vaccarello, who worked at Versace, took over for Slimane and returned to using the Yves Saint Laurent name.

Impact

Saint Laurent was best remembered for changing women's fashion. He popularized the women's tuxedo and pantsuit. He introduced styles such as the trapeze dress, shirtdress, and Mondrian dress, which was inspired by the art of Piet Mondrian and featured black lines and blocks of color. Saint Laurent was credited as one of the first couture fashion designers to market a ready-to-wear line. The fashion designer received several honors, such as the French Legion of Honor in 1985, and was the subject of several projects, including the 2014 French biopic film Yves Saint Laurent.

Personal Life

Saint Laurent dated his business partner, Pierre Bergé, from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. After they split, Bergé remained Saint Laurent's close friend, advisor, and business partner in charge of the company's finances. Saint Laurent had a nervous breakdown while in the military and suffered from manic depression. He battled drug and alcohol abuse throughout his life. While together, Saint Laurent and Bergé amassed an extensive art collection, which was auctioned off for $484 million in 2009. Bergé died in September 2017.

Bibliography

Alfaro, Aurola Wedman. "Yves Saint Laurent: When Fashion Meets Art." The Met, 14 Dec. 2023, www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/articles/2023/12/yves-saint-laurent. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Kandell, Jonathan. "Pierre Bergé, Transformative Fashion Executive and Opera Czar, Dies at 86." New York Times, 8 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/style/pierre-berge-yves-saint-laurent-dead.html?mcubz=0. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

"Saint Laurent Auction Rakes in $484 Million." Today, 26 Feb. 2009, www.today.com/id/29398234/ns/today-today‗entertainment/t/saint-laurent-auction-rakes-million. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Schiro, Anne-Marie. "Yves Saint Laurent, Fashion Icon, Dies at 71." New York Times, 1 June 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/style/01cnd-laurent.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Stamberg, Susan. "The Turbulent Love Story behind Yves Saint Laurent's Revolutionary Rise." NPR, 24 June 2014, www.npr.org/2014/06/24/323552220/the-turbulent-love-story-behind-yves-saint-laurents-revolutionary-rise. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Tagliabue, John. "Gucci Purchases Control of Yves Saint Laurent." New York Times, 16 Nov. 1999, www.nytimes.com/1999/11/16/business/international-business-gucci-purchases-control-of-yves-saint-laurent.html?mcubz=0. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024..

"Yves Saint Laurent." Cut, www.thecut.com/fashion/designers/yves-saint-laurent/?mid=yahoostyle. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

"Yves Saint Laurent." Vogue, 28 May 2008, www.vogue.co.uk/article/yves-saint-laurent-biography. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

"Yves Saint Laurent Announces Retirement." CNN, 8 Jan. 2002, www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/01/07/ysl.retires/index.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

"Yves Saint Laurent Shuts Its Doors." BBC News, 31 Oct. 2002, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2383729.stm. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.