Yves Saint Laurent, the revolutionary and most influential
designer in French couture in the last 50 years, died Sunday in Paris, at the
age of 71.
According to People
magazine, sources said the designer’s condition had been worsening in the past
months. Last week, he was hospitalized in Paris and he reportedly fell into a
coma Wednesday.
Following the news of his death, Valerie Steele, director of
The Museum at FIT (New York's Fashion Institute of Technology) said that Coco
Chanel was the only one who could be considered as revolutionary as Saint
Laurent was.
“Just as Chanel brought modernism into women's fashion, you
could say Yves Saint Laurent brought fashion up to a kind of contemporary life.
Most designers are incredibly lucky if they can contribute one thing to
fashion,” Steele said, as quoted by USA Today. “But he was like Picasso: He
contributed to so many significant movements.”
Many remarkable changes in the fashion world, which have now
become classics in every woman’s wardrobe, have been brought about by the
French designer. He is famous for "Le Smoking" tuxedo jacket, bolero
jackets, pantsuits, peasant blouses and see-through blouses.
“He knew that he had revolutionized fashion, that he had
revolutionized the second half of the 20th century. His designs accompanied the
evolution of women," Saint Laurent’s longtime partner Pierre Berge said,
when he confirmed the designer’s death to French news channel LCI.
Yves Saint-Laurent was born on 1 August, 1936, in Oran,
Algeria, as the son of an insurance company president. He left home at 17, to
work for the French designer Christian Dior, and at the age of 22, following
Dior’s death in 1957, had the mission of saving the Dior house from financial
ruin. He didn’t have time to enjoy his success though, as he was soon sent to
serve in the French army during the Algerian War of Independence. The days he
spent in the war caused him a severe depression that had to be treated in a
French mental hospital.
However, Saint Laurent recovered from his nervous breakdown
and in 1962, he started his own label, YSL, with the financial help of his
companion Pierre Berge. Even though he and Berge split in 1976, they still
remained business partners.
Embroiderer Jacques Lesage, who worked with Saint Laurent
for fifty years, ever since he was working at Dior, said: “He invented
everything. He reinvented everything.”
And not only was Saint Laurent revolutionary in inventing
new clothes models, but he also was the first couturier to show his Haute
Couture show live on the Internet in the summer of 1996. He also decided to
stop making big fashion shows for his pręt-a-porter collection after 30 years
of doing so. Since then, he only showed his models to a few journalists on
appointment basis.
Revolutionary on all plans, Saint Laurent was the first
designer to use black models in his runway shows. One of his muses, which included Loulou
de la Falaise, the daughter of a French marquis and an Anglo-Irish fashion
model and Catherine Deneuve, the famous French actress, was the Senegalese
supermodel Katoucha Niane.
Saint Laurent designed clothes that reflected women’s
changing role in society. He managed to dress women in trousers, without
stealing their femininity and sensuality. The women dressed by him were strong
and vulnerable at the same time, elegant, yet powerful.
“Fashion isn't just to decorate women, but to reassure them,
give them confidence,” the designer said when he retired in January 2002, at
the age of 65.
Many associate Saint Laurent with the beatnik look, safari
jackets for both sexes, tight pants and thigh-high boots, but also with strong
colors, as well as prints inspired from the works of famous artists such as
Mondrian or Picasso.
He was all these, and more.
