Yves Saint Laurent Dies At 71

Yves Saint Laurent, the designer who revolutionized fashion by first putting women in pantsuits, died Sunday in Paris of cancer after a long illness at the age of 71.
In a remarkable five-decade career, Saint Laurent empowered a generation of women; his ground-breaking brainwave of putting women in masculine yet chic tuxedoes was a defining moment in fashion.

Reacting to the news, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called him, "the first designer to raise haute couture to the level of art," while Prime Minister Francois Fillon commented that "Saint Laurent profoundly marked the history of haute couture."

Saint Laurent's designs celebrated the growing empowerment of women and their increasing sexual liberation, dressing them in thigh-high leather boots, see-through blouses and his legendary black tuxedos, or "le smoking" as the French referred to them.
Pierre Berge, the designer's longtime partner, announced Saint Laurent's death on French radio Sunday night.

"There are not that many people in the pantheon of fashion," Berge told France Info Radio.
"There will be two who will undeniably remain - one who symbolized the first part of the 20th century, and that's Chanel, and the other one who will symbolize the second part of the 20th century, and that's Yves Saint Laurent," added Berge, for four decades the chief executive of the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house.

Paris daily Le Figaro headlined its Monday morning edition with; "Death of Yves Saint Laurent, the world's greatest fashion couturier" showing a black and white portrait of the designer in his dashing youth and a color image of Saint Laurent and his great friend Catherine Deneuve taking his bow at his final runway show in January 2002. While cable news channel iTele led its report with the phrase, "Le Roi des Smoking est mort."

Saint Laurent was also the first designer to use black models, in another example of his path-breaking role in fashion. He was the first designer to put women in safari jackets and Beatnik looks, items that seem so familiar now, but when first displayed on his catwalks scandalized the general public.

Yves Henri Mathieu Saint Laurent was born into a French colonial family on Aug. 1, 1936, in Oran, Algeria, and first began designing by making clothes for his sisters' dolls. He staged his first "show" aged 12, when his sisters Brigitte and Michele were the key "clients."

He burst onto the fashion scene in 1954 when in a celebrated moment he and Karl Lagerfeld shared top prizes in an International Wool Secretariat competition. Christian Dior, a judge in that competition, immediately hired the fledgling talent, and was later to be succeeded by Saint Laurent at the age of 21.

He debuted at Dior with his "Ligne Trapeze," but though initially heralded, his subsequent collections for Dior were less well received. He left Dior in 1961 and opened his own couture house, in partnership with Berge, in 1962.
It marked the launch of a remarkable 20-year streak, when Saint Laurent's name became synonymous with Paris catwalk glamour and elegance, and he was the unquestioned leader in international fashion.

In a series of brilliant collections, he turned tight pants, the trapeze dress and smocks into high fashion must-haves. Saint Laurent use of ethnic and artistic themes - such as his legendary Ballet Russes collection - in his designs was also insurrectionary. Plus his ability to use and combine bright colors like fuchsia, crimson, burnt yellow and gold, earned him the reputation as the greatest colorist in the history of fashion.

Legendarily sensitive, Saint Laurent suffered a nervous breakdown in the Sixties when forced to do his military service. Permanently hidden behind huge spectacles, shy, quiet spoken, Saint Laurent, after a wild and indulgent youth, led a restrained middle age, commuting with his beloved French bulldog Moujik between his apartment on rue de Babylone, in the 7th arrondissement, and his atelier on ave Marceau, in the 8th.

"Going out is my idea of torture. I want to stay at home. When I'm in my bed with a great book, I feel as if nothing else matters," explained the increasingly reclusive Saint Laurent.
"He was born with a nervous breakdown," said Berge in a celebrated remark about a designer whose life was a long cocktail of illness, drug intoxication, tranquilizers and bouts of heavy drinking.

He made his last public appearances at the Foundation Yves Saint Laurent et Pierre Berge, most recently at exhibitions, such as one devoted to American socialite Nan Kempner. Unsteady on his feet, but always impeccably dressed, he was a living symbol of his own famous dictum; "Fashions fade. Style is eternal."

Credited by many with inventing ready-to-wear, Saint Laurent opened his first boutique in 1966 in the heart of Saint German, at 21 rue de Tournon, the first of what would grow into a 160-store chain.
In 1989, YSL became the first fashion designer to be quoted on the stock market, when Berge floated 10.8 percent of the business, which was over-subscribed several hundred times in crazed opening bidding.

Already in 1983, Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland had mounted a retrospective of Saint Laurent's work in the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York, the first ever by a living fashion designer.
But after 40 years in the business, Saint Laurent, retired in 2002, with a huge gala show in the Pompidou Center, shortly after announcing his retirement in a tearful press conference.

The designer and Berge had already sold control of their company two years before, when Gucci Group, the luxury conglomerate owned by French billionaire Francois Pinault, bought the rights to the label in a deal that netted Berge and Saint Laurent over a quarter of a billion dollars.
"Like all creators, he had two faces - a public face and a private face. The public face, everyone knows about it. And the private face, people know it less," Berge told the radio station.
"He was shy, introverted ... had very few friends. He was hiding from the world, and was seeing very few people."

His famous YSL logo, a brilliant design by the French graphic artist Cassandre, was ubiquitous on French TV Monday morning.
The designer may have departed but, as the French like to say, YSL remains the most famous initials in the world.

He will be missed... Have a great week CJ Henderson Azani Fashion