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Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent (born August 1, 1936 in Oran, Algeria), is a French fashion designer, considered among the greatest of the 20th century. In 1985, in her book, "Couture: The Great Fashion Designers", Caroline Rennolds Milbank wrote, "The most consistently celebrated and influential designer of the past twenty-five years, Yves Saint Laurent can be credited with both spurring the couture's rise from its Sixties ashes and with finally rendering ready-to-wear reputable".

The son of an insurance company manager, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent was born on the 1st of August 1936 in Oran, Algeria. Saint Laurent left home at the age of 17 to work for the French designer Christian Dior. Following Dior's death in 1957, Yves, at the age of 21, was put in charge of the effort of saving the Dior house from financial ruin. Shortly after this success, he was conscripted to serve in the French army during the Algerian war of independence. After 20 days, the stress of being hazed by fellow soldiers led the fragile Saint Laurent to be institutionalized in a French mental hospital, where he underwent psychiatric treatment, including electroshock therapy for a nervous breakdown.

In 1962, in the wake of his nervous breakdown, Saint Laurent was released from Dior and started his own label, YSL, financed by his companion Pierre Berge. (The couple split romantically in 1976 but remained business partners.) During the 1960's and 1970's, the firm popularized fashion trends such as the beatnik look, safari jackets for men and women, tight pants and tall, thigh-high boots, including the creation of arguably the most famous classic tuxedo suit for women in 1966, Le Smoking suit. He also started mainstreaming the idea of wearing silhouettes from the 20's, '30s and '40s. He was the first, in 1966, to popularize ready-to-wear in an attempt to democratize fashion, with Rive Gauche and the boutique of the same name. He was also the first designer to use black models in his runway shows. Among his muses were Loulou de La Falaise, the daughter of a French marquis and an Anglo-Irish fashion model, Betty Catroux, the half-Brazilian daughter of an American diplomat and wife of a French decorator, Talitha Pol-Getty, who died of a drug overdose in 1971, and Catherine Deneuve, the iconic French actress. Ambassador to the couturier during the late 70's and early 80's was London socialite millionairess Diane Boulting-Casserley Vandelli, making the brand ever more popular amongst the European jet-set and upper classes.

In 1983, Saint-Laurent became the first living fashion designer to be honored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1993, the Saint-Laurent fashion house was sold to the pharmaceuticals company Sanofi for approximately $600,000,000. In 1999, Gucci bought the YSL brand and Tom Ford designed the ready-to-wear collection while Saint-Laurent designed the haute couture collection. Since his retirement in 1988, Saint-Laurent has become increasingly reclusive and has spent a much of his time at his house in Marrakech, Morocco.

In 2001, Saint-Laurent was awarded the rank of Commander of the Legion d'Honneur by French president Jacques Chirac. The following year, dogged by years of poor health, drug abuse, depression, alcoholism, and criticisms of YSL designs, he closed the illustrious couture house of YSL. While the house no longer exists, the brand still survives through its parent company Gucci. He also created a foundation with Pierre Berge in Paris to trace the history of the house of YSL, complete with 15,000 objects and 5,000 pieces of clothing.

The pret-a-porter line is still being produced under the direction of Stefano Pilati after Tom Ford retired in 2004.

Style:
Like Chanel, Saint Laurent has created an unique style which for decades has been synonymous with the the most refined and modern elegance. He was the first, in the 60's to understand that haute couture could take its inspiration from the street, not limiting itself to being a closed world without any relation with everyday life. His first collection for Christian Dior in 1958 after his mentor's death, was a big sensation. In the elegant rooms of Avenue Montaigne, he introduced a gritty and irreverent new look, very politically incorrect for the formality of the period. It was already possible to sense the originality of the new designer, who, during all his career, has been a constant innovator, a modernizer of the female image.

Decades before Giorgio Armani, Saint-Laurent had the intuition to glamorize for women some items taken from the male wardrobe, such as the blazer, the tuxedo, the pant suit, and the leather jacket. His devouring passion for art has enabled him to create clothes inspired by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, David Hockney, and Mondrian. in a time when coupling art with fashion was not yet an abused idea as it is today. Again, much in advance of others, he was the first to enrich his collections with ethnic and folk elements coming from Africa, Spain, Morocco, Russia and China. His enduring love for the theater and for literature, Marcel Proust being his tutelary deity, have also been transposed into his clothes.

Information courtesy of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Saint-Laurent_%28designer%29