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| Birth Name(s) : Yves Saint Laurent |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Public Figure |
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Full Yves Saint Laurent Biography
Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent (IPA: ) (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 cuture's rise from its Sixties ashes and with finally rendering ready-to-wear reputable".
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 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 1998, Saint-Laurent has become increasingly reclusive and has spent a much of his time at his house in Marrakech, Morocco.
In 2001, he was awarded the rank of Commandeur of the Légion d'Honneur by French president Jacques Chirac.
The following year, dogged by years of poor health, drug abuse, depression, alcoholism, criticisms of YSL designs, Saint-Laurent 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 Bergé in Paris to trace the history of the house of YSL, complete with 15,000 objects and 5,000 pieces of clothing.
The prêt-à-porter line is still being produced under the direction of Stefano Pilati after Tom Ford retired in 2004.
Like Chanel, Saint Laurent has created a unique style which for decades has been synonymous of the most refined and modern elegance. He was the first, in the 60s to understand that haute couture could take its inspiration from the street, not limiting itself to be 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 unpolitically correct 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 he had the intuition to glamourize for women some items taken from the male wardrobe, such as the blazer, the tuxedo, the pant suit, the leather jacket. His devouring passion for art has enabled him to create clothes inspired by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, David Hockney, Mondrian, etc. in a time when coupling art with fashion was not yet an abused idea as it is today. Again, much in advance on 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 theatre and for literature, Marcel Proust being his tutelary deity, have also been transposed into his clothes. |
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