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Yves Saint Laurent
(1936-2008)
Who Was Yves Saint Laurent?
As a teen, Yves Saint Laurent left Algeria for Paris to work for designer Christian Dior and gained acclaim for his dress designs. In 1966, he launched his own fashion labels, where his adaptations of tuxedos for women garnered him fame. He was the first living designer to obtain a solo exhibition in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983.
Early Years
Yves Henri Donat Matthieu Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936, in Oran, Algeria, to Charles and Lucienne Andrée Mathieu-Saint-Laurent. He grew up in a villa by the Mediterranean with his two younger sisters, Michelle and Brigitte. While his family was relatively good off — his father was a lawyer and insurance broker who owned a chain of cinemas — childhood for the future fashion icon was not easy. Saint Laurent was not popular in institution, and was often bullied by schoolmates for appearing to be homosexual. As a consequence, Saint Laurent was a nervous child, and sick nearly every day.
He found solace, however, in the world of fashion. He liked to create intricate document dolls, and by his early teen years he was designing dresses for his mother and si
Yves was no saint
BAD BOY: Saint Laurent
According to author Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Saint Laurent, who died in 2008 aged 71 was a tyrant who relied on drink, cocaine and amphetamines and who was crippled by a chronic, acute depression. In Saint Laurent: Bad Teen she portrays the man who dressed Catherine Deneuve, Lauren Bacall and the Duchess of Windsor as a “frightfully unhappy” man who took his insecurities out on his entourage. “Several times witnesses saw him lose his top and throw objects at people,” she says. “His physical power was as great as his inner strength. Yves was an runner as far as ashtray throwing is concerned.”
Lelièvre interviewed dozens of the designer’s friends, although his business partner and long-term companion Pierre Bergé refused to help with the book, saying he did not crave to endorse “a jumble of poorly verified gossip”.
Such gossip includes Betty Catroux, one of Saint Laurent’s muses, characterizing the king of couture as a man incapable of giving. “Yves Saint Laurent didn’t contain friends. He loved nobody. He was intimate with nobody,” she is quoted in the novel while model Victoire says: “They state he loved women. No, he didn’t love them.
Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent co-founder and ‘true prince of culture’, dies at 86
Pierre Bergé, the French fashion tycoon, philanthropist and art collector who was the driving force behind the creation of the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house, has died at the age of 86 following a long illness.
Bergé was one of the most influential business figures on the French cultural scene, known for his very public long-term personal and business relationship with the designer Saint Laurent, which captured the common imagination and inspired a series books and films.
From 1961, when the two men founded the fashion house, the tough Bergé led the business side, while the shy Saint Laurent created the designs that would shape French style throughout the 60s and 70s.
Bergé was a passionate bibliophile and art collector, amassing two of the world’s top intimate art and rare books collections with Saint Laurent. He also campaigned for gay rights and donated a large part of his fortune to Aids research. In 2010, he was part of a group of business figures who took over the struggling daily French newspaper Le Monde, and was chairman of the supervisory board at the newspaper.
The former Social
Born in Algeria to French parents, Yves Saint Laurenthad a difficult childhood. Although taunted at school, he found solace at home in his drawing and painting and occasional designs of dresses for his mother and two sisters.
He first came to the fashion world's attention when he was seventeen and studying in Paris. He won 1st prize in a dress design competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat.
When Christian Diorsaw Saint Laurent's designs, he was so impressed that he offered the young man a profession as an assistant and was soon referring to Saint Laurent as his 'dauphin'. When Dior died in 1957, Saint Laurent took over the house. His first collection for Dior in 1958 was greeted enthusiastically and his 1960 collection for Dior appropriated the Left Bank approach, with black leather jackets, knitted turtlenecks, and crocodile jackets with mink collars. The fashion nature watched with fascination as highway fashion was redesigned at the hands of a couturier.
In the same year Saint Laurent was called up to fight in the Algerian war. When he was discharged several months later, he discovered that he had been replaced as he