Crooner Culture

“I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity – all I hope for in my clothes.” – Yves Saint Laurent

French fashion giant Yves Saint Laurent, one of the great designers of the 20th century who revolutionized women’s dress, has died at the age of 71 after a lengthy illness.

Saint Laurent, whose black trouser suits and safari jackets became an icon of women’s liberation in the 1960s, died late Sunday of a brain tumor, his former lover and longtime business partner Pierre Berge said.

He had suffered poor mental and physical health for much of his life and had been seriously ill “for a year,” Berge told French radio. The funeral will take place Friday in Paris.

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 22, was put in charge of the effort of saving the Dior house from financial ruin. After 20 days, the stress of being hazed by fellow soldiers (for his homosexuality), 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. He was discharged from the fight, and returned to Dior to find that he’d been replaced. So he and his partner set out on their own.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the YSL 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 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. He was the first, in 1966, to popularize ready-to-wear in an attempt to democratize fashion. He was also the first designer to use black models in his runway shows.

His career was not without controversy. In 1971 a collection modeled on the styles of World War II Paris was slammed by some American critics, and his launch in the mid 1970s of a perfume called “Opium” (which my mother wore for YEARS, and I can still smell it in my nose) brought accusations that he was condoning drug use.

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

In 2001, he was awarded the rank of Commander of the Légion d’Honneur by French president Jacques Chirac.

Saint Laurent retired in 2002 and became increasingly reclusive. From then until his death he spent much of his time at his house in Marrakech, Morocco.

He also created a foundation with Pierre Bergé in Paris to trace the history of the house of YSL, complete with 15,000 objects and 5,000 pieces of clothing.

(Image used with permission from Newscom)

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