On his ninth birthday, Yves Saint Laurent announced, “One day, my name will be written in letters of fire on the Champs Elysées.” This in mind, you sense the designer—who passed away in 2008 at the age of 71—would be pleased with the retrospective currently lighting up 15 rooms of the Petit Palais in central Paris.
From his haute-couture beginnings at Dior, through the ’60s gender revolutions to the liberated catwalk lines of the ’70s, Saint Laurent sought to empower females through form and fashion. He created 15,000 pieces from 1962 to 2002, including Le Smoking (1966), the first trouser suit (1967) and the first jumpsuit (1968). The designer shared this sensibility for emancipatory dressing with Coco Chanel, whom he greatly admired. Following in her footsteps, he adopted menswear to women’s sensibilities, inventing clothing that debuted as easily on the silver screen as on the street. Saint Laurent’s enduring influence is further evidenced by the exhibition’s attendees: 85% are female, international tourists and Parisiennes alike, aspiring to the style of his muses, among them Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Hardy.
Upon entering the grand halls of the palais, guests are blinded by the rainbow brights of the designer’s collections. Clothed mannequins, video clips and photographs parade the evolutions and revolutions of the designer’s work. The “aesthetic ghosts” of Saint Laurent’s inspiration appear throughout this chronology. Wagner, La Traviata, Phèdre, and Proust’s Duchess of Guermantes are all name-checked as dramatic and literary muses. The magnetism of stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Arletty from Les Enfants du Paradis seeps into the seams of sequined gowns. Deneuve’s classic black dress with white organdy collar from Buñuel’s Belle du Jour is displayed in its simple allure. The iconic lines of modern artists become dress designs; Cocteau’s words are scrawled across satin evening jackets and Mondrian’s geometry divides wool jersey shifts. We travel vicariously through Bambara art and Orientalism, Russian palaces and Moroccan medinas.
The styles before us, once the fabrics of high society, are the predecessors to today’s popular fashions. If now we are familiar with gypsy skirts, jungle prints and Saharan golds, the originals make an impressive contemporary mark, a fact that would undoubtedly please the man who championed the rise of ready-to-wear.
On now-August 29th at Petit Palais, Paris.
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