12/07/2020
— How would you like to be remembered?
As an artist who created a body of work or as a magician of the ephemeral?
-An artist who created a body of work.
Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936 in Oran, Algeria, where he spent his entire youth.
In 1955, after briefly studying at the Chambre syndicale de la haute couture à Paris, Michel de Brunhoff, director of Vogue (Paris), introduced him to Christian Dior, who immediately hired him as his assistant. When the couturier died in 1957, Saint Laurent became artistic director of the house of Dior. His first collection—known as the “Trapeze” collection—was an immediate success when it was unveiled in January 1958. Saint Laurent was later fired from his position at Dior when he was hospitalized at Val de Grâce after being drafted for military service in 1960.
Along with Pierre Bergé, whom he had met in 1958, Sain Laurent decided to create his own haute couture house. He presented his first collection at 30 bis rue Spontini in Paris on January 29, 1962. The pair would continue to work there for the next twelve years while Saint Laurent invented the modern female wardrobe, designing the pea coat and the trench coat in 1962, the first women’s tuxedo in 1966, the safari jacket and first women’s pantsuit in 1967, and the first sheer looks and jumpsuit in 1968. By referring to male codes of dress, he gave women confidence, boldness, and the symbols of power while still maintaining their femininity. However, Saint Laurent wanted to dress all types of woman, not only wealthy haute couture clients. His SAINT LAURENT rive gauche boutique, which opened in Paris in 1966, was the first ready-to-wear store to bear a couturier’s name and paved the way for ready-to-wear fashion as we now know it.
Saint Laurent began designing costumes for the theater, music hall, ballet, and cinema in the 1950s and would continue to do so throughout his entire career. He collaborated with the likes of Roland Petit, Claude Régy, Jean-Louis Barrault, Luis Buñuel, and François Truffaut and dressed Jean Marais, Z**i Jeanmaire, Arletty, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Adjani, and Catherine Deneuve, becoming her devoted friend.
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