10. He made us look and smell good.—Saint Laurent gave us the tuxedo jacket, the pants suit, the safari jacket, and the pea coat. He gave us peasant blouses, see-through blouses, bolero jackets, trapeze dresses, and smocks. He gave us Opium and Champagne. He influenced a generation of designers and made me wish I were French.
11. He had his ups and downs.—Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent’s business partner and friend, often said that Saint Laurent was “born with a nervous breakdown.” The designer battled depression, ill health, and drugs on and off throughout his life. I’m just sad that his life was not always as colorful, as sexy, and as beautiful as his art.
12. He saved France.—The house of Dior was responsible for almost 50 percent of French fashion exports in the late 1950s, so Saint Laurent’s success at Dior was deemed crucial for the French economy. After his first collection, headlines proclaimed that Saint Laurent had “saved” France.
13. He inspired confidence.—New York socialite Nan Kempner created a scandal when she tried to wear her Le Smoking tuxedo—perhaps Saint Laurent’s most famous, and at the time, most provocative design—to dinner at a Manhattan restaurant in 1968. When the maitre d’ told Kempner that she couldn’t dine in a pair of trousers, she promptly dropped the pants and dined in the jacket, which looked like a very short dress. There are many more stories like this.
14. He shook things up.—Not only did YSL challenge social norms by creating gender-neutral clothing for women and modeling nude himself, he was also the first major designer to use models from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds.
15. He is survived by his mother.—She may be the best dressed mother in the world, but while the world mourns the loss of a legendary fashion icon, she mourns her little boy. C’mon, that’s sad.
Yves Saint Laurent may have passed on to the runway in the sky, but his timeless classic looks—especially those created in the 60s—will continue to inspire and be reflected on for a long time to come. I hope up-and-coming designers today will not only be inspired by his designs, but by his actions and by his words. I’d particularly like to call their attention to the words of Yves Saint Laurent upon his retirement from the fashion world at age sixty-five: “Fashion isn’t just to decorate women, but to reassure them, give them confidence.”
RIP YSL.
Photo source: DGegant on flickr (cc)
