Photo: Yves Saint Laurent at home, 55 rue de Babylone, Paris, 1977, © André Perlstein.
“Fashions fade, style is eternal,” observed Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008), one of the greatest designers of the twentieth century. A legend in his own time, Saint Laurent revolutionized fashion by introducing the first ready-to-wear line, Rive Gauche, in 1966, just five years after he and his partner Pierre Bergé founded their fashion house in Paris, democratizing luxury goods to the world.
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Saint Laurent was a visionary, bringing to bear a radical approach that transgressed preconceived boundaries while maintaining the highest standards for beauty, quality, and prestige. Saint Laurent understood, “Fashions pass quickly, and nothing is more pathetic than those puppets of fashion outrageously made up one day, pale the next, pleated or ironed stiff, libertine or ascetic. Playing with fashion is an art. The first rule is don’t burn your wings.”
Portrait of Yves Saint Laurent, 1969, Photography by Jeanloup Sieff, © The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff.
In preserving his integrity, he extended his reach far beyond the realm of possibility, making him a venerable figure around the world. Whether introducing high art to fashion through the legendary Mondrian dress or dressing women in men’s wear, Saint Laurent knew, “I participated in the transformation of my era. I did it with clothes, which is surely less important than music, architecture, painting but whatever it’s worth I did it.”
In celebration a singular life in fashion, the Seattle Art Museum presents Yves Saint Laurent: The Perfection of Style, on view now through January 8, 2017, with an eponymous catalogue published by Rizzoli. Organized into eight thematic sections, the exhibition features 110 ensembles that illustrate his achievements and the sources of his inspiration including the “Paper Doll Couture House” that he created as a teenager.
Through the exhibition, we witness the evolution of Saint Laurent’s work, from his humble beginnings with his first line in 1962, which introduced the peacoat, and the natural growth towards the tuxedo (1966), the “First” pantsuit (1967), and the safari jacket (1967). These items, which have become staples, were at one time shocking introductions to the world. But Saint Laurent’s style went beyond the gender norms.
“First” tuxedo worn by Ulla, Autumn– Winter 1966 haute couture collection, © Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, Paris/Gérard Pataa.
He observed, “I find men’s clothing fascinating because sometime between, say, 1930 and 1936 a handful of basic shapes were created and still prevail as a sort of scale of expression, with which every man can project his own personality and his own dignity.”
It was this love that he brought to his house, and shared with the world. For Saint Laurent, “Dressing is a way of life. It brings you joy. It can give you freedom and liberation, help you to find yourself and to move without restraint. Isn’t elegance forgetting what one is wearing?”
In this way, he brilliantly straddled the space between form and function, creating bold, powerful looks that were also profoundly comfortable. That comfort came from a place of recognizing the ability to express one’s self through the way they dress for the world. But it went beyond the mere elements of fashion, digging deeper into the soul. Dressing could be a profoundly intimate affair we share of ourselves with all those whose paths we cross, and the key, as Saint Laurent understood it was mastery of the self: “Finding your own style is not easy, but once found it brings complete happiness. It gives you self-confidence, always.”
“First” pantsuit, Spring–Summer 1967 haute couture collection, © Patrick Bertrand/Les Editions Jalou.
For Saint Laurent, fashion was a means to mediate a much deeper personal pain, one that consumed him but also fed the fires to create. He revealed, “I pass for a hypersensitive, reclusive neurotic, which I may well be, but I hope the year won’t come when my anxieties and fatigue will destroy my love of this life, of all the things that inspire me–a line of music, a face in a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem.”
It is now, nearly a decade after his death, that we can reflect on the space where fashion meets art, and consider that it is not merely a business, but has the possibility to speak to our souls. For as Saint Laurent understood, dressing is only the outermost manifestation of our selves. “Without elegance of the heart, there is no elegance,” he knew.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
