Legendary Designer Yves Saint Laurent Dies at 71

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Source | UK Vogue
Campbell's YSL Tribute

NAOMI CAMPBELL has paid tribute to legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent following his death, aged 71, on Sunday evening.

Campbell, who has always been outspoken about race issues in fashion, credits Saint Laurent with her success in the fashion industry.

"My first Vogue cover ever was because of this man," the supermodel told Channel 4 News. "Because when I said to him 'Yves, they won't give me a French Vogue cover, they won't put a black girl on the cover' and he was like 'I'll take care of that,' and he did."

In a show of solidarity with the eponymous fashion house the designer founded in 1962, Campbell wore a YSL autumn/winter 2008-9 creation - designed by the house's now-creative director Stefano Pilati - to the CFDA Awards in New York yesterday evening.

"He was the king of fashion," Campbell added in the interview. "He created pret-a-porter, he was the first designer to put women of colour on the runway. He was extremely important in my career, giving me one of my first jobs."

"He has done everything. He's done it. If you go to the museum you will see he has done it all. He has done so much for people of colour."
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I wonder how KL felt when receiving the news. Im assuming he has some type of feelings. They were really close at one time!:blush:
 
The man was a fashion genius:king:! STILL love,love his clothes...so timeless,bold & sexy. Yet,when I think of him the 1st thing that blows my mind is his progressive nature:heart:. And that nature went beyond fashion,the man was truly a tireless champion for minority models and didn't mind using them in his shows AND advertisements! He was not afraid. And he did it all in a quiet way all while being one in a million...still sad to know he's gone. The world has truly lost a great artist:cry:!
"Yves 62" Vogue Paris March 1992 by Laurence Benaim



Omifan
 
^Thank You for sharing your scans OMIFAN9:heart:


Source | NPC
His quips were as good as his snips

Since the death of Algerian-born French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent on Sunday, there have been slews of articles and obits, from the in-the-know (Suzy Menkes) to the insightful (Cathy Horyn) and wistful (Hilary Alexander) praising his revolutionary collections. In these and the bevy of YouTube documentary clips, something else becomes clear: the man gave great quote.

Beginning in 1958 as the boy wonder at Christian Dior, the designer was a hedonist who shocked the world with sheer blouses. But he also read Proust (to the very last page!) and made many pronouncements on and off the runway. Forty years ago, his safari collection featured black models, demonstrating more racial diversity on the catwalk in 1968 than exists today. After that triumphant collection, Saint Laurent told Women's Wear Daily: "So they have crowned me king. Look what happened to all the other kings in France.'' In his pith, the designer quipped as wittily as Dorothy Parker, as when he launched his luxe cosmetics range in 1978: "I have said before that the most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.''

Soon after Brigitte Bardot declared that haute couture was for grannies, Saint Laurent countered that, "in spite of what people say, I believe I will save the couture and not kill it by making it return to its original meaning, which is privacy, rarity and quietness."

Since Sunday, Saint Laurent has been declared the most important designer of our time (Karl Lagerfeld would like that mantle; so would Marc Jacobs) and today, before the designer's ashes reach their final destination in his Majorelle Garden in Marrakesh, the world will be eyeballing what VIPs like Catherine Deneuve, Madame Bruni-Sarkozy and a laundry list of major designers will be wearing to Monsieur Saint Laurent's funeral in Paris. There will be his own griffe, to be sure, but those outfits not technically signed Yves Saint Laurent will still owe a debt to YSL. Diane von Furstenberg wore an authentic le smoking to the CFDA Awards on Monday night in homage, but so did other designing women such as Ashley Olsen and Carolina Herrera though tellingly, their labels didn't read YSL. Neither does the hippie de luxe look lately popularized by Sienna Miller et al., but first sported by Saint Laurent's doomed BFF Talitha Getty. His style influence from pantsuits and safari to boho fabulous is so overreaching, everything that came after is simply taken for granted.

Saint Laurent excelled at combining drama and simplicity, whether in trapeze dresses for Dior or his own androgynous 1966 tuxedo pantsuit and bow-front blouses. One wonders what he must have thought of the bloated theatrical extravagance that passes for couture, watching it from his past few years of retirement. Oh wait, he already opined on that phenomenon, back in 1979. "I'm bored - and angry - with people who just design clothes for the runway. It's a massive deception, and one a lot of people have fallen for. Some of the Paris designers are doing two collections each season - one for the runway and another for the showroom. I think that belittles the idea of fashion and soils everyone in a bizarre, unamusing joke.''

Twenty-nine years later, he no longer needs to put up with it.
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Source | The New York Times | Thursday, June 5th
The Revolutionary
by Ruth LaFerla

Fashion, they say, is ephemeral. But in the case of Yves Saint Laurent, that adage holds little weight. During much of his 45-year career, Saint Laurent, who died in Paris on Sunday at the age of 71, held the style world in his thrall, wielding an influence that dominated the runways and exerts a fascination to this day.

A stylistic rebel with a paradoxically conservative streak, Saint Laurent arguably did more to advance fashion than any designer of his generation. His signal contribution to the world of style was to elevate the lowly and the outré, conferring an aristocratic insouciance on modes of dress — military peacoats, peasant blouses and raffia-bordered tribal skirts — once considered too gritty or exotic for conventional wear.

“He altered the consciousness of the way we dress,” said Lisa Koenigsberg, a culture historian.

But his legacy is not purely abstract. Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, Miuccia Prada and Alber Elbaz of Lanvin are but a handful of the designers to have borrowed liberally, and sometimes literally, from Saint Laurent’s seemingly inexhaustible repertory.

“Designers have been copying Yves Saint Laurent for more than 20 years,” said Keni Valenti, a vintage fashion dealer in New York. As recently as this spring, he said, his downtown loft was a magnet for designers rifling his racks of vintage YSL. Many of them, absorbing the designer’s ideas down to the subtlest details, openly look to him for validation.

“I and a couple of friends would always say, ‘How would Saint Laurent do it,’ ” Mr. Jacobs told Women’s Wear Daily. “It’s a little, funny gauge of a thing being right, a kind of standard for chic, for youth, for sex appeal without vulgarity and with overall beauty.”

Citing Saint Laurent is a long-held tradition. “When Yves was alive, all the huge names in fashion — Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Claude Montana — could not help but be affected,” recalled Marian McEvoy, who befriended the designer in the mid-’70s, when she worked in Paris as an editor of Women’s Wear Daily.

“His was a very profound influence,” she said, noting that there was no shame or hesitation in knocking off his most compelling ideas. “If you were a designer at the time, you gave in to that influence kind of joyfully. It was: ‘Hey, that’s a great piece. Let’s copy it.’ ”

Today Saint Laurent is a touchstone for designers hoping to demonstrate a mastery of tailoring and draping. In the mid-’90s, Mr. Ford was alternately criticized and lauded for his fidelity to the designer. In his collections for Gucci, his curvaceous blazers and dinner jackets recalled the gender-bending sexuality of a Saint Laurent piece memorably captured in the ’70s by Helmut Newton.

In his fall 2007 couture collection, Jean Paul Gaultier also paid homage, resurrecting the fluid trouser suits that Saint Laurent had perfected decades earlier, down to their flaring lapels, extended shoulders and the slouchy drape of the pants. Last winter, Mr. de la Renta introduced his interpretation of the classic Saint Laurent trouser suit, a black and white spectator look.

Never mind their vintage provenance. The nods to the master still look up-to-date. The originals “were always appropriate without a kind of blue-haired-lady appropriateness,” Ms. Koenigsberg said.

That perverse balance between sobriety and seductiveness partly explains why Saint Laurent’s ideas still race through fashion’s bloodstream. There are the decorously bowed blouses resurrected by Proenza Schouler for resort 2008.

There are the cascading ruffles on dresses by Mr. Elbaz, who briefly designed for the Saint Laurent label, a not-so-subtle homage to Saint Laurent’s gypsy looks of the mid-’70s. And, of course, Le Smoking, a women’s tuxedo revived over the years in the collections of Mr. Elbaz, Giorgio Armani, Viktor & Rolf, Ralph Lauren and others.

Even in his sportier styles, Saint Laurent championed a sexy androgyny. Successors to the safari jacket introduced in 1968 resurface on designer catwalks almost every season. On its debut, it caused a furor, sending devotees to Abercrombie & Fitch to improvise interpretations of their own. Echoes can be seen in the spring and resort collections of Proenza Schouler and Michael Kors.

There is no telling where the next impulse may come from: the Mondrian mood of the mid-’60s? The extravagant Cossacks of 1976. Designers continue to raid the archives, scour vintage shows and dealers’ ateliers for plunder.

“Of course the stuff will be more valuable, especially the couture,” Mr. Valenti said.

On learning that one of his idols had died, Mr. Valenti was stricken. But he entertained another mood as well: “As a dealer, I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, ka-ching!’ ”
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Source | AFP | Upated with new info from previous post
Celebs, stars to mourn "prince of fashion" Yves Saint Laurent

 PARIS — Celebrities and the biggest names in fashion including Claudia Schiffer, Catherine Deneuve and France's ex-supermodel first lady Carla Bruni will pay a final tribute to "prince of fashion" Yves Saint Laurent at his funeral Thursday.

The legendary designer, who dominated international couture from the swinging 1960s until his 2002 retirement, died Sunday in his Paris home of a brain tumour, aged 71.

Supermodel Schiffer along with film stars Alain Delon and Deneuve will be among the 800 mourners joining Saint Laurent's former lover and longtime business partner, Pierre Berge, who founded the iconic YSL house in 1961, when the designer was only 25.

The 3:30 pm (1330 GMT) funeral service at the Saint-Roch church, one of Paris' biggest, is "on an invitation only basis", Father Roland Letteron, the Roman Catholic priest who will officiate, told AFP.

Tributes pouring in for the reclusive fashion giant, who despite his success was mentally and physically frail throughout his life, hailed his legacy as revolutionising women's wardrobes with a new androgynous style that mirrored women's push for a stronger social role.

"He turned fashion on its head," said Berge, "making it socially relevant rather than merely esthetic. With Saint Laurent, women ceased being merely clothes-horses or the objects of designer fantasies."

At the service, intimate friend Deneuve is to recite a poem in homage to the man who created her outfits for the cult 1967 liberation movie by Luis Bunuel "Belle De Jour", about a frigid housewife who spends afternoons as a prostitute.

The late baroque church is located close to the Louvre museum on one of Paris' most exclusive streets, the Rue Saint-Honore, home to a bevy of top-end designer boutiques.

In homage to its founder, YSL shops worldwide were to close for two hours from 1330 GMT.

Also attending the funeral will be staff from the YSL empire as well as current designer Stefano Pilati and most of the big names on the Paris fashion scene -- Christian Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Sonia and Nathalie Rykiel, Kenzo Takada, Valentino and Riccardo Tisci.

Notably absent will be rival Karl Lagerfeld, "away on business", according to Chanel, as well as Pierre Cardin, also not in Paris.

From the booming business sector, the head of the world's leading luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault, is expected, along with the head of Christian Dior couture, Sidney Toledano.

Saint Laurent, who was born August 1, 1936 in the Algerian town of Oran in the pre-independence era, will be cremated and his ashes flown to a botanical garden in Marrakech, Morocco, bordering a home bought there by Berge and YSL.

The couturier "spent much of his life in Morocco. He will stay there in a country that influenced and marked him greatly," said Berge. "He will end up in the Maghreb where he was born."
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Au Revoir Monsieur
Saint Laurent
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~:heart:~



image source | WWD



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source : Getty

This picture of Catherine Deneuve at the funeral is so sad. It is said that she read a poem of Walt Whitman.
 
Catherine Deneuve looks devastated in that picture, sad.

I have just seen a french documentary of Yves Saint Laurent on french Tv (it is an old one and Pierre Bergé comments the image), It was really moving to see his work again ...
 
Paris mourns legend Saint Laurent



The great and the good of the fashion world gathered in a Paris church to pay their last respects to fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent.
He died of a brain tumour in Paris on Sunday at the age of 71.
Saint Laurent changed the face of fashion with hallmark designs like his women's tuxedo and trouser suits.
He designed clothes that reflected women's changing role in society: more confident personally, sexually and in the workplace.
As well as fashion luminaries such as Jean-Paul Gaultier, Valentino, Hubert de Givenchy, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood and Sonia Rykiel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his new wife Carla Bruni - herself a former top model - were among the 800 mourners invited to the high-profile funeral.
Hundreds of onlookers were gathered outside the Saint-Roch church in central Paris, following events inside relayed on a giant screen.


Moving tributes
French film star Catherine Deneuve, visibly moved, gave a reading during the service, and was followed by Pierre Berge, the designer's former business and personal partner, who paid a moving tribute to his long-term partner, recounting his first meeting with YSL and his influence on fashion.





"You could have slid into fashions at times, but instead you remained faithful to your own style, and you were quite right, for that style is now everywhere, perhaps not in fashion, but in the streets of the whole world," Mr Berge said.
From the world of politics, the widow of Iran's Shah Farah Diba, the wife of former French president, Bernadette Chirac and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe were there, and high-profile businessmen such Bernard Arnault and Francois Pinault were also present.
Saint Laurent's 95-year-old mother was also present, along with a number of top models, including Claudia Schiffer and Laetitia Casta.
Saint Laurent retired from haute couture in 2002 and had been ill for some time.
His body will be cremated and his ashes spread in the garden of his villa in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh.
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-BBC News
 
MissMagAddict said:
^Thank You for sharing your scans OMIFAN9:heart:
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No problem! Here's another captured by Elgort,in the midst of show madness there he is just cool & clam. In a quiet way...
...is just so him:heart::cry:!
Omifan
 
i was at the funeral ..............so sad :(:cry:
i put pics later if you want !
 
:shock:Really:cry:?! If you really care to share...I wouldn't mind seeing what happened.
 
capt.charly, how did you manage to be at the funeral ?
Could tell us who did you see, what did happen during the ceremony ?
 
The picture of Catherine kills me, she was soo sad, i just seen the video of the funeral on Sky News. :(
 
Paris Match (french weekly publication) has published an issue with a 42p. Hommage to Saint-Laurent this is full of pictures and some texts. I still hadn't read it.....

Paris Match, June 5th 2008 - cover

scanned by berlinrocks
 
a beautiful comment on fashion eye (Florence Muller's blog)
http://www.fashion-eye.net/article-20093753.html

Manifesto d'amour pour YSL
Mon amour et intérêt pour YSL va au delà de la marque et date depuis longtemps.
Il date de l'époque de mon enfance, lorsque pour la première fois j'ai fouillé un magazine Vogue venant directement de France et j'ai vu ces images qui m'ont fait rêver; images qui pour moi étaient synonymes d'élégance, de bon goût et de savoir-faire.
Parce que pour moi et pour le reste du monde qui rêvait de Paris, "Paris était à cette époque YSL ou YSL était Paris" et le nom de Saint-Laurent était magique.
Cet homme que j'ai vu pour la première fois dans un reportage à la télé quand j'avais à peu près 8 ans faisait rêver le reste du monde et, m'a amené à rêver moi.
Un homme qui se cachait derrière ses grosses lunettes, qui avait une force immense, présente dans un charisme et une fragilité encore plus grande dont ses créations sont le reflet.
Cet homme qui côtoyait des artistes comme Cocteau, Noureyev, Warhol ou Picasso!
Cet homme, qui à mon avis, a réussi à élever certaines de ses pièces au rang d'oeuvres d'art, et qui amène l'art dans ses collections.
La robe Mondrian, les collections inspirées par le cubisme de Picasso, le pop’art de Warhol, l'Espagne de Vélasquez, le Maroc de Delacroix ou encore les tableaux écarlate de David Hockney sont des exemples de cela.
Cet homme qui a aidé à émanciper la femme, qui l'a mise en pantalons et en smoking, vêtements par excellence masculins, mais aussi synonymes d'élégance et raffinement exclusifs jusqu' alors d'une certaine classe d'hommes d'affaires, aristocrates et banquiers très opposée à l'idée d'une femme moderne, active et indépendante.
Et c'est cela que j'aimais chez YSL: cette capacité à basculer les normes préétablies, à pousser les élites vers le chaos en sachant que lui-même appartenait à ce groupe, à être rebelle en restant toujours bon enfant.
Il y aura toujours quelques uns qui diront que tout ça était artificiel, faux ou même que c'est très facile ou confortable de faire basculer les autres quand on sait que nous même nous ne tomberons pas.
Mais ces critiques, même si elles peuvent avoir une certaine dose de vérité, ne correspondront jamais à la réalité, car les gens qui connaissent vraiment YSL, l'homme et la marque, savent qu'il était toujours le premier à basculer, à tomber..
Je pense que les effets de toutes les "révolutions" sociales, esthétiques ou même idéologiques qu' YSL a entamé ont produit ces effets positifs mais aussi néfastes, avant et surtout, en lui-même!.
Yves Saint-Laurent, est à mon avis, le dernier prince décadent des temps modernes, l'Icare qui a voulu atteindre le soleil et qui s'est brûlé dans le feu de sa propre gloire!
Du dauphin de Dior en 1957 au moine de la rue Babylone d'hier il y a un parcours de gloire, de succès, de génie mais aussi de décadence, de tragédie et de solitude.
Yves, est pour moi la réincarnation de l'artiste dont parlait Rimbaud, ceux qui contiennent la gloire en soi-même!
Et c'est ce Yves, génial est presque mythifié, que j'aime:
l'Yves du smoking, l'Yves des ballets rousses, l'Yves de l'Opium, l'Yves nu icône gay, l'Yves bourré, quelques fois décadent mais toujours incomparable et génial!
Il est parti aujourd'hui.
Paris et le monde (de la création) ne seront plus jamais les mêmes!

Adieu Monsieur Saint-Laurent.

Eduardo
IFM 07/08
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yahoo babelfish translation :
My love and interest for YSL go beyond the mark and date for a long time. It goes back to l' time of my childhood, when for the first time j' excavated a Vogue magazine coming directly from France and j' saw these images which m' made dream; images which for me were synonymous d' elegance, of good taste and know-how. Because for me and the rest of the world which dreamed of Paris, " Paris was at that time YSL or YSL was Paris" and the name of the St. Lawrence was magic. This man that j' saw for the first time in a report on TV when j' had about 8 years made dream the rest of the world and, m' brought to dream me. A man who hid behind his large glasses, which had an immense force, presents in a charisma and a brittleness even larger whose its creations are the reflection. This man who côtoyait artists like Cocteau, Noureyev, Warhol or Picasso! This man, who in my opinion, succeeded in raising some of his parts to the row d' works d' art, and which brings l' art in its collections. The Mondrian dress, collections inspired by the cubism of Picasso, pop art of Warhol, l' Spain de Vélasquez, Morocco de Delacroix or tables scarlet of David Hockney is examples of that. This man who helped with émanciper the woman, who l' put in trousers and smoking, clothing par excellence male, but so synonymous d' exclusive elegance and refinement jusqu' then d' a certain class d' men d' businesses, aristocrats and bankers very opposite with l' idea d' a modern, active and independent woman. And c' is that j' liked at YSL: this capacity to rock the preestablished standards, to push the elites towards chaos by knowing that itself belonged to this group, to be rebellious while remaining always good child. There will be always some which will say that all that was artificial, false or even as c' is very easy or comfortable to make rock the others when it is known that we even we will not fall. But these criticisms, even if they can have a certain amount of truth, will never correspond to reality, because people which know really YSL, l' man and the mark, knows qu' it was always the first to be rocked, to fall. I think that the effects of all the " révolutions" social, aesthetic or even ideological qu' YSL started produced these positive but so harmful effects, before and especially, in itself!. Yves the St. Lawrence, is in my opinion, the last declining prince of modern times, l' Icare which wanted to reach the sun and which s' is burned in the fire of its own glory! Dolphin of Dior in 1957 with the monk of the street Babylon d' yesterday there is a course of glory, success, of genius but also of decline, tragedy and loneliness. Yves, is for me the reincarnation of l' artist about which Rimbaud spoke, those which contain glory in oneself! And c' is this Yves, brilliant is almost mythifié, that j' like: l' Yves of smoking, l' Yves of the ballets russet-red, l' Yves of l' Opium, l' Naked Yves gay icon, l' Stuffed Yves, some times declining but always incomparable and brilliant! He left aujourd' today. Paris and the world (of creation) will be the same ones never again!
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