Lucrezia Magazine

After four decades of being at the top of haute couture, Yves Saint Laurent retired from fashion in 2002 and has died at the age of 71.

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent was born in the coastal town of Oran, Algeria, on August 1, 1936, at a time when the North African country was still considered part of France.

A shy, lonely child, he became fascinated by clothes, and already had a solid portfolio of sketches when he first arrived in Paris in 1953, aged 17.

Vogue editor Michel de Brunoff, who was to become a key supporter, was quickly won over, and published them.

The following year, Saint Laurent won three of the four categories in a design competition in Paris - the fourth went to his contemporary Karl Lagerfeld, now at Chanel.

Discerning the young man's potential, de Brunoff advised Christian Dior to hire him and he rapidly emerged as heir apparent to the great couturier, taking over the house when Dior died suddenly three years later.

Saint Laurent would say of his mentor: "Dior fascinated me. 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 spent at his side."

However in 1960, like many Frenchmen of his age, Saint Laurent was called up to fight in his native Algeria, where an independence war was underway.

Less than three weeks later he won an exemption on health grounds, but when he returned to Paris it was to learn that Dior had already found a replacement for him, in the person of Marc Bohan.

With his close associate and lover Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent resolved to strike out on his own, with Berge, who survives the couturier, taking care of the business side.

Saint Laurent's success lay in the harmony he achieved between body and garment - what he called "the total silence of clothing".

He was also in the right place at the right time. Having learned his trade at the house of Dior, he founded his own couture house at the start of the 1960s, at a time when the world was changing and there was a new appetite for originality.

Saint Laurent rode his luck through the rise of the youth market and pop culture fuelled by the economic boom of the 1960s, when women suddenly had more economic freedom.

His name and the familiar YSL logo became synonymous with all the latest trends, highlighted by the creation of the Rive Gauche ready-to-wear label and perfume, as well as astute licensing deals for accessories and perfumes.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he set the pace for fashion around the world, opening up the Japanese market and subsequently expanding to South Korea and Taiwan.

Among his many fans in his native France was the actress Catherine Deneuve, who was always seen at his shows.

Saint Laurent's career was not without controversy. In 1971 a collection modelled on the styles of World War II Paris was slammed by some American critics, and his launch in the mid 1970s of a perfume called Opium brought accusations that he was condoning drug use.

For fellow-designer Christian Lacroix, the reason for Saint Laurent's success was his astonishing versatility. There had, Lacroix said, been other great designers but none with the same range.

"Chanel, Schiaparelli, Balenciaga and Dior all did extraordinary things. But they worked within a particular style," he explained.

"Yves Saint Laurent is much more versatile, like a combination of all of them. I sometimes think he's got the form of Chanel with the opulence of Dior and the wit of Schiaparelli." (Source: AFP)

To gauge the achievements, and sheer determination, of YSL to succeed in a world that was closed off from outsiders, is to backtrack to the time when a 17 year old YSL left home for Paris to pursue his dream of being a couturier. In 1953, at the age of 17, his entry - an asymmetrical cocktail dress - won first prize in the International Wool Secretariat Contest. It was while he was working as a cutter, that he was employed by Christian Dior to work as an assistant. At the age of 21, after Dior’s death, YSL took over as artistic director of Christian Dior. There are no designers today that take over prestigious fashion houses at the same age.

St Laurent was a prodigy. He spent an immense amount of his childhood, and adolescence, sketching clothes, but his early success as artistic director had to be put aside due to National Service where he was conscripted to serve in the French army during the Algerian War of Independence. This service led to him having a nervous breakdown, and entering a mental institution where he underwent electroshock and psychiatric treatment.

In the wake of this, he then went on (with the financial support of his one time partner, and business partner Pierre Bergé) to establish his own fashion house, and then the Rive Gauche (for Pret-a-Porter/Ready-to-Wear lines) boutiques were established in 1966. Menswear was then added in 1974, and the empire expanded with cosmetics, and fragrances (Opium, Rive Gauche, Jazz for Men, Kouros, to name a few). In regard to fashion firsts:

Yves St Laurent was awarded the Knighthood of the Legion of Honor by then French president Mitterand, and there is no doubt - the fashion world will never be the same without its prodigy.

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