Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent photographed by Jeanloup Sieff (
for the brand’s first male fragrance, Pour Homme. Ironically, the provocative ad did not cause much of a stir initially, as the photo was hardly published   http://www.vogue.com/slideshow/3765489/fall-fashion-prints-shoes-patterns-personality)

Last weekend I saw the biograpahy film about Yves Saint Laurent who was a french fashion designer born 1936 in Oran and died 2008 in Paris. He started his carea in the  Dior's Fashion House in which after the death of Christian Dior become the headmaster of the fashion design. More information about biography of Laurent:  http://www.vogue.com/slideshow/3765489/fall-fashion-prints-shoes-patterns-personality/
 What intrests me the most in the film is the way as I could get to know the designing way of Laurent.  His life was hard and complicated because he had to struggle with psychical and personal problems( some of them connected with his sexuality) but all this time he never resign from searching and designig new ideas.

 He was bringing art and music into his designs. There were homages to his art buddies, Andy Warhol, Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Marcel Proust whose works were reinterpreted in the form of elegant dresses and jackets. Op-art, pop-art and even the French impressionists became beautifully embroidered, wearable works of art worn by the world's fashion plates from the late Jackie Kennedy to muse Catherine Deneuve, Jane Fonda to Paloma Picasso.

Monndrian

 Once of the most recognizable collection designed by Yves was the one inspired by Moundrian's paintings. He made a simple dress with straight black lines and composition of basic colours such as red, yellow and blue. It become one of his most famous proyects, copied in all over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The African influences

In 1967 Saint Laurent presented collection of "african" dresses made with the wooden corals, shells and rafii. This way he show us an example of fusion the elegant french haute couture with primitivness inspired by egzotic sourcess.












However , Yves Saint Laurent collections were not only be inspired but also were and still are inspiring. We still wear clothes (not even realize that) designed by him or have some connotations with his ideas.
Personally , during a film I found Saint Laurent a very modest and shy men with great genious. Which we can also noticed after his speech upon his retiremnt in 2002 :

"I participated in the transformation of my era. I did it with clothes, which is surely less important than music, architecture, painting ... but whatever it's worth I did it,"