Yves Saint Laurent; The Last Great Couturier

Fashions fade, style is eternal. –Yves Saint Laurent

The great fashion designer and couturier Yves Saint Laurent passed away last evening in his Left Bank apartment on Rue de Babylone around 11:10pm. As the texts and emails started arriving last night relaying the news I wistfully informed my friend who was with me at the time that fashion and culture had lost one of its greats. He, however did not share my sense of loss. Though a highly informed and ravenous consumer of fashion, to him Mr Saint Laurent seemed a dinosaur, a ghost of a distant time whose relevance and influence faded decades ago. What could be less contemporary and relevant than a frail retired fashion designer worshiped largely by society matrons and the Euro-elite?

What people forget though is that Saint Laurent, along with Pierre Cardin was the progenitor of the democratization of fashion that we are experiencing today. It was Saint Laurent who popularized and championed ready to wear in a time when haute couture ruled supreme and while the rest of the world, particularly America would copy, seam by seam the creations of Dior, Patou, and Madame Gres (who incidentally was the last to produce a ready to wear line calling it “prostitution”). Today, even those of us with the most modest means can have access to original fashion.

Catherine Deneuve and Yves Saint-Laurent, 1966

Moreover, where other designers like Balenciaga and Chanel were primarily concerned with the challenges of construction and dressmaking, Saint Laurent created emotion, importing ideas and shapes and colors from disparate spheres such as ethnic dress and modern art, from the breathtaking sweep of a pagoda shoulder to the shocking graphic impact of a Mondrian inspired shift. From his work, we learned that clothes can become more than bourgeois acquisitions. They acquired a narrative, specifically a story of women and their new found sexuality. We also learned that through an understanding of history and art and a plurality of culture and traditions, an article of clothing, something even as simple as a two piece black tuxedo, can transcend the mundane into something iconic. Like it or not, we all learned a little from Yves Saint Laurent and we should all feel a little emptier at the passing of this man. Lord knows I do.

AP — French designer Yves Saint Laurent acknowledges applause from the audience following the presentation of the spring collection in Paris in 1984. Working with pencil and paper, cloth, thread and scissors, Saint Laurent was credited with reflecting the social changes of his times in his clothing designs.

• The Pants Wearing Legacy of Yves Saint Laurent {Associated Press}
• Yves Saint Laurent’s Confidence Was His Greatest Asset — and Allure {Wall Street Journal)

Jonathan Thong is a regular contributor to homo-neurotic.com. He is the author of his own blog Mea Culpa.

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