Yves Saint Laurent (designer)

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent (1 August 1936 – 1 June 2008), referred to as Yves Saint Laurent or YSL, was a French fashion designer who, in 1962, founded his eponymous fashion label.

He is regarded as being among the foremost fashion designers of the twentieth century.

Saint Laurent was born on 1 August 1936, in Oran, Algeria, to French parents (Pieds-Noirs), Charles and Lucienne Andrée Mathieu-Saint-Laurent.

He grew up in a villa by the Mediterranean with his two younger sisters, Michèle and Brigitte.

Saint Laurent liked to create intricate paper dolls, and by his early teen years, he was designing dresses for his mother and sisters.

At the age of 18, Saint Laurent moved to Paris and enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, where his designs quickly gained notice.

Michel De Brunhoff, the editor of Vogue France, introduced Saint Laurent to designer Christian Dior, a giant in the fashion world.

"Dior fascinated me," Saint Laurent later recalled.

"I couldn't speak in front of him. He taught me the basis of my art. Whatever was to happen next, I never forgot the years I spent at his side."

Under Dior's tutelage, Saint Laurent's style continued to mature and gain even more notice.

In 1953, Saint Laurent submitted three sketches to a contest for young fashion designers organized by the International Wool Secretariat.

Saint Laurent won first place.

Subsequently, he was invited to attend the awards ceremony held in Paris in December.

During his stay in Paris, Saint Laurent met Michel de Brunhoff, editor-in-chief of the French edition of Vogue magazine and a connection to his father.

Michel De Brunhoff, a considerate person who encouraged new talent, was impressed by the sketches that Saint Laurent brought with him and suggested he should become a fashion designer.

Saint Laurent eventually considered a course of study at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the council which regulates the haute couture industry and provides training to its employees.

Saint Laurent followed the advice, left Oran for Paris after graduation, began his studies there and eventually graduated as a star pupil.

Later that same year, he entered the International Wool Secretariat competition again and won, beating his friend Fernando Sánchez and young German student Karl Lagerfeld.

Shortly after his win, he brought a number of sketches to de Brunhoff who recognized close similarities to sketches he had been shown that morning by Christian Dior.

Knowing that Dior had created the sketches that morning and that the young man could not have seen them, de Brunhoff sent him to Dior, who hired him on the spot.

Although Dior recognised his talent immediately, Saint Laurent spent his first year at the House of Dior on mundane tasks, decorating the studio and designing accessories.

Eventually he was allowed to submit sketches for the couture collection.

With each passing season, more of his sketches were accepted by Dior.

The simple, flaring lines of his first collection for Dior, called the Trapeze line, a variation of Dior's 1955 A-Line, catapulted him to international stardom.

Dresses in the collection featured a narrow shoulder that flared gently to a hem that just covered the knee.

In August 1957, Dior met with Saint Laurent's mother to tell her that he had chosen Saint Laurent to succeed him as a designer.

His mother later said that she had been confused by the remark, as Dior was only 52 years old at the time.

Both she and her son were surprised when Dior died at a health spa in northern Italy of a massive heart attack in October 1957.

In 1957, Saint Laurent found himself at age 21 the head designer of the House of Dior.

His spring 1958 collection almost certainly saved the enterprise from financial ruin.

In his second collection for Dior, presented for fall 1958, he iconoclastically lowered hemlines by five inches and was not greeted with the same level of approval that his first collection received, with many considering it a major misstep.

Neri Karra writes that there was speculation at the time that Marcel Boussac, the owner of the House of Dior and a powerful press baron, had put pressure on the government not to conscript Saint Laurent in 1958 and 1959, but after the disastrous Fall 1958 season, reversed course and asked that the designer be conscripted so that he could be replaced.

Soon after, Marc Bohan was hired to assist St. Laurent, and the spring 1959 Dior collection brought lengths back to the knee in a well-received collection inspired by the 1930s.

Later collections for the House of Dior featuring hobble skirts (fall 1959) and beatnik fashions (fall 1960) were savaged by the press.

In 1959, he was chosen by Farah Diba, who was a student in Paris, to design her wedding dress for her marriage to the Shah of Iran.

In 1960, Saint Laurent found himself conscripted to serve in the French Army during the Algerian War.

In 1985, Caroline Milbank wrote, "The most consistently celebrated and influential designer of the past twenty-five years, Yves Saint Laurent can be credited with both spurring the couture's rise from its 1960s ashes and with finally rendering ready-to-wear reputable."

He developed his style to accommodate the changes in fashion during that period.

He approached his aesthetic from a different perspective by helping women find confidence by looking both comfortable and elegant at the same time.

He is also credited with having introduced the "Le Smoking" tuxedo suit for women and was known for his use of non-European cultural references and of diverse models.