A look back at Yves Saint Laurent

News Desk — GlobalPost Editors March 10, 2010 16:37 ET

Yves Saint Laurent takes Paris — again

DiggThis

A first-time retrospective of the French fashion designer's work opens at the Petit Palais.

By Olivia Snaije — Special to GlobalPost
Published: March 11, 2010 08:01 ET

PARIS, France — The iconic French designer Yves Saint Laurent, who died almost two years ago, is all over Paris this spring.

A first-time retrospective exhibition of Saint Laurent's entire body of work spanning 40 years opens today at the Petit Palais museum. A flurry of books and new editions of biographies are just out, such as Laurence Benaim’s emotional chronicle "Requiem pour Yves Saint Laurent." A re-edition of "La Vilaine Lulu," an adult comic Saint Laurent had published in 1967 about a mischievous girl called Lulu is due out this month. Saint Laurent is also the subject of an album of 16 songs by Alain Chamfort that will be made into a musical next year.

“He was the absolute embodiment of the French couturier,” said Benaim, editor of the fashion magazine Stiletto, who met Saint Laurent while covering fashion for the French daily Le Monde. “He was a symbol of elegance, in a sense the heir of both Chanel and Dior.”

But one shouldn’t give him a nationalist image, she added. “He proved that beauty had no borders.” Besides, she said, “The burning sun of the Mediterranean was within him.”

Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent was born in 1936 in Oran, Algeria, which at the time was a French colony. As a child he made costumes for paper dolls and later designed dresses for his mother and sisters, which his mother had made by a dressmaker. Saint Laurent moved to Paris in 1954 after winning top prizes in the dress category of a design competition. The editor of French Vogue introduced him to Christian Dior and history was made. Dior took him on as an assistant in 1955 and two years later, at 21, Saint Laurent became the house’s top designer after Dior suffered an unexpected heart attack.

The exhibit at the Petit Palais opens with the first room dedicated to Saint Laurent’s creations for the house of Dior and includes his famous A-line Trapeze collection.

It was during his time at Dior that Saint Laurent met Pierre Berge, who was to become his astute business partner, and his partner for life. It was Berge who nursed Saint Laurent back to health after the first of many nervous breakdowns following a stint in the army in 1960. A year later Saint Laurent and Berge, with the help of an American backer, opened the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house.

A long corridor in the show catalogues Saint Laurent’s early work during which he provoked a “gender revolution.”

Login or Register to post comments

Global economy: grease is the word

Is manufacturing leading to global recovery? Here's the dirty truth.


Protesting on "No Sarkozy Day"


French teachers walk out over violence

Since the beginning of the year, French schools have seen a string of attacks.


Protesters gather in central Paris


Are French-speakers victims of "linguistic terrorism"?

France has launched efforts on behalf of all francophonie to preserve the language in diplomatic circles.


Canada's veiled immigration problems

The case of a Muslim student removed from class for wearing a veil hints at the difficulty of integration.


Sarkozy prepares for rebuke at the polls

France's regional elections expected to deal blow to president's UMP.


Yves Saint Laurent takes Paris — again

A first-time retrospective of the French fashion designer's work opens at the Petit Palais.