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GQ Men's Magazine Entertainment Life Yves Saint Laurent
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The life and death of Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent was an exhibitionist, a patient of a military psychiatric hospital and a lover of cocaine.
But first of all the last great fashion artist.
Today, the fashion designer would have turned 78 years old.
Limousines, Saint Honore, strict black suits, the clatter of high heels, fashion, art and politics stars, a crowd of people held back by security behind a barrier — all this could be the beginning of the next Yves Saint Laurent collection show.
But no, on June 5, these people gathered in the Saint Roque church in Paris to say goodbye to Yves Saint Laurent himself, who left this world at the age of 72 in the late evening of June 1, 2008.
THE SUN KING
The church, dedicated to people of art since its first stone was laid by Louis XIV, gathered both the faithful muses of Saint Laurent from the tearful Catherine Deneuve to Carla Bruni Sarkozy (with her husband) — and the monsters of the fashion world - from Hubert de Givenchy and Valentino to Jean Paul Gaultier and Marc Jacobs.
"Saint Laurent had the vitality to constantly surprise," recalled a frustrated Christian Lacroix.
For him, Yves 'talent was a " shock of modernity", first experienced at the sight of the " cover of Paris Match, as a child, in 1958.
On this cover there was a photo of Yves Saint Laurent between models in a mini dress of the bride and a bright red short coat from his first collection for the House of Dior.
Even then, he outlined everything that happened with the style of the 60s, and it was neither too early nor too late.
Such precision is the politeness of kings."
The fashion designer's friend and partner Pierre Berger was more categorical: "He was a freedom fighter, an anarchist, he threw bombs at the feet of society.
This is how he changed our world and made a woman stronger."
And here's how the king of the sun of fashion himself spoke about his role in 2002, when he said goodbye to the catwalk to immerse himself in a hermit: "I feel that I created the wardrobe of a modern woman, and participated in the transformation of my era.
I did it with the help of clothes and I am very proud that women all over the world today wear pantsuits, tuxedos, double breasted jackets, trench coats."
On the same topic, they are very fond of quoting other words of the generous monarch: "The best outfit for a woman is the embrace of a beloved man, but when she is a little less lucky, I come to the rescue."
18 year old Saint Laurent and his first model receive a medal of the fashion competition
As is often the case with kings, Yves Saint Laurent started surprisingly early.
He was born in 1936 in the Algerian town of Oran, in the family of a military man and a beauty.
He loved his mother and sisters, was afraid of evil classmates, at the age of 18 he moved with his family to Paris.
I always drew.
In 1954, he won a fashion competition (by the way, in another category of the same competition, a certain Karl Lagerfeld was the best), and his sketches were shown by the publisher of Vogue Michel de Brunof to Christian Dior, whose fame was at its zenith at that time.
The creator of New Onion immediately took young Yves to work as an assistant.
1 of 2
21 year old Saint Laurent on the balcony of the Dior House on the day of the triumph of the first collection
Couturier and his team, first collection, 1958
On October 24, 1957, Christian Dior suddenly dies.
The owners of the House, knowing how much the master trusted his young assistant, make a bold decision — and 21 year old Saint Laurent becomes the art director of Christian Dior.
One of the most famous photos of young Yves is from January 1958, and he stands on a small balcony in the collection presentation hall and calmly looks through the thick lenses of his glasses at the crowd of photographers.
The show of his first independent collection for Dior has just ended.
It was called "Trapeze" and caused some particularly sensitive tears of delight.
Saint Laurent was expected to fail in the worst case, and at best — to continue the famous fitted magnificent silhouette of the new bow, which Dior thundered after the war.
But he showed a completely different, absolutely fresh collection, with simple short A shaped dresses, without a hint of a waist, made of light flowing fabrics that give the female body complete freedom.
The next day, the newspapers came out with the headlines "Yves saved France".
THREE LETTERS
Having started on such a high note, Saint Laurent's long career was doomed to ups and downs, similar to the changes in the length of skirts of the last fifty years.
Just two years after his triumphant debut, Saint Laurent presents a collection of the spring–summer 1960 season called Beatnik.
She was wearing short motorcycle jackets made of alligator leather, mink coats with narrow knitted sleeves and suits worn with turtlenecks.
The investors of that time did not yet have the craving for defiant luxury characteristic of the current bonzes — the owners of the Dior House were very frightened by such a bold look at fashion.
By that time, Yves had already met Pierre Berger, next to whom he would be destined to spend his whole life.
Berger liked to say that Saint Laurent was " born with a nervous breakdown."
It was Pierre who morally supported Yves when the patrons, frightened by the "Beatniks", put another fashion designer, Mark Boan, in the place of the chief designer of Dior.
Berger helped Yves not only to cope with another blow, but also to sue the former owners for an impressive sum for illegal termination of the contract.
With this money, as well as investments found by Berger in the United States, the couple founded their own fashion house Yves Saint Laurent.
Thus began the story known by the three golden letters YSL.
It was at the end of 1961, and already in 1962 the first fashion show took place in a mansion on Spontini Street, previously owned by the artist Foran.
And again a triumph.
In 1966, YSL opened the first boutique in the port Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, named after the left bank of the Seine, which in those years had a reputation for free thinking, student and — a couple of years later revolutionary.
But in fashion, Yves Saint Laurent made his revolution even then, being one of the first to declare his desire to develop couture ideas in a more real and vital format of pret a port.
In the same year, Saint Laurent dressed Catherine Deneuve, who played in another manifesto of the era — Bunuel's "Daytime Beauty".
Deneuve has been a fan of Saint Laurent since his debut in 1958, she sang to him in 2002 at the solemn and farewell show in honor of the 40th anniversary of the House, held at the Stade de France before the World Cup final, she read Walt Whitman's poems to him on June 5, 2008 in the church of Saint Roque.
The actress was not only an adept, but also a loyal friend of the couturier, who felt the most subtle nature of his genius like no one else.
7
MAIN BOWS OF YSL
1.
Mondrian dress
2.
Safari Style
3.
Tuxedo Suite
4.
Pantsuit
5.
Transparent blouse
6.
Kaftan and skirt from the collection "Russian seasons"
7.
Ethnic "African" onion
"Yves was incredible," Deneuve said in one of the many interviews in early June.
— He was constantly doing fantastically audacious things, which only a very timid person is capable of."
There really is a lot of bold and beautiful after Saint Laurent — perhaps no fashion designer of the XX century left such a rich creative legacy.
This is especially felt now, when fashion has obviously run out of steam and the processing of what past generations have created has become a normal practice.
The fruits of Saint Laurent's exuberant imagination in the new world of second — handedness are among the most popular.
"We are very sorry that we did not know him personally, because we learned so much from him, he was our source of inspiration a million times," Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana sighed at the funeral.
"We studied his work so closely that we knew literally everything about him."
Everything he did was absolutely relevant, especially the game of male female: Yves Saint Laurent was the first to create a sexy male costume for a woman."
By the way, even this appeal to the fashion of the past years was invented by Saint Laurent.
Another of his famous friends, Paloma Picasso, recalled how at one of the parties she found a suit from the 40s at a flea market made such a strong impression on Saint Laurent that it inspired him to the famous collection of 1971 in the style of the 40s and Marlene Dietrich.
Remembering Dietrich, Saint Laurent created his famous smoking suits, and after them developed the theme of pantsuits like no one before him.
It became a real boom of the late 60s early 70s.
Today it is hard to believe that the first wearers of YSL trousers could not be allowed in a decent restaurant.
One such bold fashionista, when she was pointed out to the wrong dress code, simply took off her trousers, remaining in a jacket — the maitre d ' had nothing to object to this.
In general, many designers like to attribute the invention of women's trousers to a lot of designers, and, most likely, Chanel should be the first to answer for them.
But Saint Laurent did not try to take credit for someone else's merits — God forbid, he always worshipped the authority of Chanel.
Talented in developing the theme of "masculine for women", he was never a "feminist", if I may say so, and always understood that the strength of a woman is precisely in her femininity.
No wonder a few years later, his next and repeatedly reproduced subsequently hit was a transparent blouse.
And women also accepted this sexual freedom from Saint Laurent with gratitude.
Vogue editor in chief Diana Vreeland said that Saint Laurent "has a special magic pipe for women.
No matter what he does, women of any age in any part of the world will listen and go where he tells them."
Saint Laurent may not have campaigned for gender equality,but he proved the opposite by his own example.
In 1971, an advertisement for the men's perfume Yves Saint Laurent Pour Homme was published, which is a photo portrait of a sitting Yves, completely naked — everything was as good with Saint Laurent's sense of humor as with his sense of beauty.
Advertising and perfume were in great demand.
The next fabulously successful perfume from YSL appeared in 1977 under the chic name Opium.
And his advertising campaigns also never go unnoticed: they starred Linda Evangelista, Rupert Everett, a naked Sophie Dahl (this session was banned in many countries), and David Lynch managed to stand behind the camera.
Many people recalled the turbulent 70s and the active participation of Yves in the hedonistic escapades of the decade in connection with the sad occasion.
Actress and model Marisa Berenson, the granddaughter of another fashion prankster, Elsa Schiaparelli, fondly told reporters about the endless celebration of life, about " the time when we were young and everything was saturated with freedom."
And this wonderful era for her, as for many, was embodied by Yves Saint Laurent.
Like all great aesthetes, Saint Laurent worshipped luxury
Subsequently, the couturier openly admitted his long term addiction to drugs and other opiums.
This is not surprising, knowing his wounded, neurotic nature and the amazing creative form in which he stayed all his life.
"How many sketches do you make for one collection?" a TV announcer in a suit asks Saint Laurent in a white doctor's coat.
It's 1968 in the yard.
"About a thousand."
- "And how many models are left in the end?"
— "Two hundred".
- "What an amazing selection!"
- "Yes".
— "And how much time does it take to create these sketches and models?"
- " I draw all the sketches in two weeks.
Our studio makes models for a month and a half."
It is possible to work like this for 40 years with only one main doping boundless love for the beautiful.
Saint Laurent never limited himself to anything, and he boldly transferred his love, for example, to modern art, to his collections.
Art responded to him in return: remember the famous series of portraits of Saint Laurent by Andy Warhol.
The most famous art work of Saint Laurent is his Mondrian dresses.
Then there were dedications to Picasso's harlequins and Braque's pigeons, jackets embroidered with luxurious Van Gogh sunflowers, and a collection of 1976 dedicated to Diaghilev's "Russian Seasons".
Saint Laurent and Berger were themselves passionate collectors.
Their huge collection is kept in a Parisian house, in the picturesque Gabriel Castle in Brittany, dedicated to Saint Laurent's favorite writer Marcel Proust, as well as in their unique ultramarine villa Majorelle in Marrakech.
Today, the villa is open to the public — and there is something to see there.
For example, to the magical Garden of Eden, where Saint Laurent and his bulldog, named Muzhik III, found solitude during the last years of his life and where his ashes are scattered.
In 1983, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened a retrospective of his work, dedicated to the 25th anniversary.
This was the first ever exhibition of a still living fashion designer in the museum walls.
Pierre Berger once said: "I do not know if fashion can be called art, but I know for sure that fashion needs an artist."
Many people tend to exaggerate the role of Pierre Berger, of course, a huge one, in the life and career of Saint Laurent.
They say that with such a patron and not such heights can be achieved.
To which Berger himself perfectly retorted: "First of all, you need to be Saint Laurent for this."
1960
Saint Laurent is unexpectedly called up to the army.
For him, it was almost like death - after a couple of months with an acute nervous breakdown, Eve gets from the barracks directly to the psychiatric hospital.
There they do not stand on ceremony with him: electric shock, harsh drug and psychotherapy.
A few weeks later, he weighed 35 kilograms.
1966
Saint Laurent presents to the public one of his masterpieces — the first women's tuxedo — and opens the first boutique pret a porte Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche.
In the same year, he makes costumes for Louis Bunuel's film "The Day Beauty", thereby laying the foundation for a strong friendship between French cinema and Haute Couture.
1971
Yves Saint Laurent poses nude for an advertisement for a men's fragrance, thus becoming the first couturier who, following the example of Andy Warhol, made himself the center of his aesthetics.
In 30 years, his example will be followed by modern daffodils from fashion John Galliano, Tom Ford and Dolce and Gabbana.
2004
The Pierre Bergé Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, which owns more than 15,000 artifacts — paintings, furniture and art objects - and 5,000 couturier models, opens the exhibition "Yves Saint Laurent: a dialogue with art".
Yves was not only a genius bubbling with ideas, but also a meticulous self cataloguer who understood the artistic and historical value of everything that came out from under his pencil.
2008
A few weeks before the couturier's death, Saint Laurent and Berger entered into a civil marriage.
Their romantic relationship ended in 1976, but Berger remained a friend and business partner of Saint Laurent.
At the funeral, Berger said: "One day I will join you under the Moroccan palm trees."
Author: Evgenia Fedorovskaya, August 1, 2014
Photo source: jeanloup sieff, RDA/vostock photo
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