France says adieu to Yves Saint Laurent

France is in mourning for a hero today. Yves Saint Laurent, who died last night at the age of 71, was not just a fashion designer. He was part of history and one of the biggest French influences on the world in the latter part of the 20th century. 

Old colleagues and admirers were in tears on radio phone-ins this morning, remembering "Monsieur" as they called the former boy genius who took over from Christian Dior at the age of 21.

For the Paris fashion establishment, the YSL era really ended in 2002, when the reclusive couturier retired. His death, from a brain tumour, ended a life that seemed to have brought little happiness. He suffered from chronic depression. Despite his immense success, he remained a fragile soul to the end.

Extremely shy, he hardly ever talked to the press. At his farewell press conference in 2002 he offered a rare glimpse of himself. "I've known fear and terrible solitude. Tranquilizers and drugs, those phoney friends. The prison of depression and hospitals. I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober."

President Sarkozy has led the tributes, expressing his "deep homage to one of the great names of fashion, the first to raise Haute Couture to the rank of art, assuring its global brilliance." Sarko's statement added a very French thought. "Saint Laurent was convinced that beauty was a necessary luxury for all men and women."

Le Monde said Saint Laurent ranked among the world's great artists. "He will remain the bard of French elegance. He invented the Rive Gauche style, very Parisian, a subtle mix of masculin and feminine which intensifies sensuality and which women too on with happiness.

The most touching tribute came from Pierre Bergé, the businessman who had been his domestic partner since they joined forces to set up the Saint Laurent house in 1961. Bergé was with him when he died at midnight last night and he talked about him this morning. "There are not many people in the pantheon of fashion. There will be two who remain from the 20th century. Coco Chanel symbolised the first part of the century and Yves Saint Laurent the second part. Chanel gave women their freedom. Saint Laurent gave them power."

It is probably hard for the younger generation, used to fashion democracy and mass-market designers, to imagine the revolutionary influence of Saint Laurent's earlier looks: sleek trouser suits, tuxedos, turtlenecks, the safari and leather jackets, op-art geometric dresses and so on. The quintessence of French chic of the 1960s and 70s was Catherine Deneuve, the actress, in one of YSL's elegant outfits.[Deneuve with YSL in 1960s picture above and in the Belle de Jour film dressed by YSL below]   

Bergé recalled this morning: "He was the first to have put women in pants, the first to have put them in tuxedos, the first to have put them in masculine clothes, the first to have employed black models. Yves Saint Laurent was fully aware that ...all women across the world owed him something."

[below: YSL talks about his new Dior collection in 1959]

Comments

[christopher muir]

CB - yours is a moving tribute. And Sarkozy's observations were full of worldliness. France, at moments like this, is at its best

[concedo nulli]

Charles, you are a very good journalist. You have a remarkable faculty for selecting generous information. You cheer us up. Please continue doing so.

[dot king]

Oh dear, Charles, Concedo is cheered up by your reporting of YSL's demise, however I know what is meant.
The video you post demonstrates the modesty of this great name in Haute Couture. And how wonderful to see him sketch - just a few simple chalked lines and a whole new line is born. He designed wearable clothes I always thought (even if I couldn't, in my wildest dreams, ever afford them).

I look forward to lots of retrospectives on TV - the last were when he retired six years ago.
Another Era ends.

[Francois D]

How be creative while having been so depressive? It is often the case for poets or musicians with difficulty to earn money during life, but more rarely of other artists.

Very surprising (and thank you, CB, for having found this old interview in black and white).
How to be so bad with his body "si mal dans sa peau" and so well for dressing other peoples?

A thought also for the "Villa Majorelle" in Marrakech that he restored with Pierre Bergé (and now legated to Marocco state, I think).

http://dp.mariottini.free.fr/special/maroc/marrakech/jardin-exotique.htm

Should not we say "blue Majorelle Yves Saint Laurent" instead of "blue Majorelle" alone?

[Ros]

What a refreshing and interesting article, Charles, congratulations and let's have more like that, please!

[Narguesse Stevens]

How wonderful to see this great man quickly sketch an outfit - so simple yet with perfect elegance. A true genius, and with becoming modesty.

[qwerty]

Elle est belle, la villa Majorelle - it's open to visitors. I wish the man had been happier, he had everything to make his life a dream.
BTW: Ted Kennedy successfully operated of a brain tumour, he benefited from break-through experimental therapy. Why do the rich and connected get the best medical treatment?

[azloon]

[Ted Kennedy successfully operated of a brain tumour, he benefited from break-through experimental therapy. Why do the rich and connected get the best medical treatment?] QWERTY

i thought you were going to say, "how fortunate for him!" not, "why him and not us?"

if the technique is an improvement over past techniques, it will be implemented in the general population as the new method is publicized in medical journals and taught to more surgeons.

and in the u.s. at least, those with insurance (70%) will be able to have the same surgery in a timely fashion and not have to wait numerous months because of back-ups in the state-run medical system.

a good friend of mine lived seventeen years after surgery for a grade 2 astrocytoma which is close to the brain tumor type of kennedy (tho kennedy's tumor may be a more lethal grade, 3 or 4). and my friend had two subsequent surgeries for new tumors over those seventeen years. but he got to see his children grow up, learned to play golf, and how to make his own beer (lots of it).

he was told the median survival length for his type and grade of tumor was four years. so he beat the odds, but ultimately not death. but you gotta die of something.

[Roger Goodacre]

Re Kennedy - Contrast the treatment Kennedy received with that recently applied by the National Health Service in the UK to a woman with advanced cancer (who incidentally had been an NHS employee for 33 years).

Her surgeon informed her and her husband that a new drug exists which was her only hope of alleviating her condition, but that it wasn't available to NHS patients (the vast majority of the population). It's horrendously expensive, £50,000/80,000 euros for six months. Nevertheless, they decided they wanted to give her a chance, and spent their savings on the drug.

The really shocking scandal is that when the money ran out and they could afford the drug no longer, the NHS - to which they like everyone had had to contribute through taxation throughout their lives, and which is supposed to guarantee treatment to all free at the point of delivery - then declared that she was no longer entitled to treatment because she had disqualified herself by opting for private treatment.

On appeal, the Department for Health refused to back down, saying that it did not wish to set a precedent and create a 'two tier' health service. Stalin would have been proud. The lady has since died.

[qwerty]

Yes, Roger Goodacre and Azloon. In France (and I guess it's the same everywhere) you have to be in the hands of a good surgeon/oncologist/whatever and it's hard to know which are good and which are murderers (I go by TV news programs/hearsay). Desperately ill people are reduced to clinical trial shopping, searching the internet for information they don't get from their GPs. So it's great for Ted Kennedy, but indeed what about the rest of us.
If there is one field in we should all be equal, it's health matters.

[dot king]

I'm wondering what is the Catholic church's attitude to gay couples these days. Has there been a change? Here was Yves Saint Laurent's life-time lover and partner speaking openly about their relationship, followed by tributes from a priest.
I was struck on the news coverage by the churchmen just behind Pierre Bergé as he spoke, and wondered just what they might have been thinking and whether, in spite of the man's greatness, and his significance for France and the rest of the world of Haute Couture, there wasn't a twinge of disapproval or discomfort.
Anyone know the "official line" these days?