Blind and crippled, Pierre sits in his well-appointed Paris house attended by Séverine, the weary wife at the heart of Luis Buñuel’s 1967 classic movie Belle du Jour. It is undoubtedly the best film of the year and helped shape the French star’s profession, which led to her becoming the nation’s leading lady for decades. In the field, Deneuve wears a little black dress, fashionable with its padded white collar and cuffs. It was designed by, his incarnation of Coco Chanel’s game-changing style that became a mainstay of female’s. The dress is currently on display at Costa Mesa through October 27 in California, where you can first see it first.
“They became friends immediately”, notes Gaël Mamine, co-curator of the present that began at Marrakech’s. “In her movies, he was the one who did all the versace for her. He donned her in her personal life as well as for the camera.”
A scintillating picking from the large collection of works by the great French couture, the new show functions photographs, jewelry and parisienne couture garments spanning Saint Laurent’s job from 1963 to 2002. Travel for the garments — featuring 46 looks — and stay for the designs. His extremely vivid line drawings represent the creation of his designs. Created with ink on papers, they capture the essence of his material choices — large satin, shimmering silk, hard tweed and luscious velvet.
“It’s the first day in a show we have so many pictures from Yves Saint Laurent from the beginning, the’ 60s to 2002”, says show custom Claudia Huidobro. “The idea of the show is to show the process of the pictures as the foundation of the whole work,” I said.
Perhaps as a young man, Saint Laurent’s designs were extraordinaire, so fine that they landed him a position working at Christian Dior in 1955 when the budding custom was only 19 years older. After Dior’s death two years later, he immediately saw potential in the young man, hired him, and later named him as his successor. His spring show of 1958 was a sensation, introducing the trapeze dress to the world. But his follow-up autumn show, in which he lowered hemlines, sparked doubts about his staying power.
“It was a challenge for him to find his way to his own style”, offers Huidobro. He used all the techniques he had learned from Dior, and I believe he was constantly trying to create his own fashion language.
A period of forced military conscription led to a stay in a mental institution after he was dropped by Dior. Although he appeared to be completely washed up upon release, Pierre Bergé, his industrialist partner, encouraged him to start his own studio. YSL was born in 1962, ushering in a new generation of French fashion.
“When he opens his house, from ’62 to ’65, it was really in the classical way he used to work with Dior but with a new twist, which was really, really of the time”, notes Huidobro. I believe he started to separate himself from Dior when he started to work with the jersey dress and make references to art, Mondrian, pop art, and other similar things.
Saint Laurent was the icon of the time by including paintings by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Piet Mondrian (quadrilateral shapes and primary colors). However, he also incorporated elements of Asian and African culture into his work, not just on Western art alone.
“He was from Algiers, and his collection in the late ’60s has African fabric and prints, and also all the hairdressing was like African sculpture”, says Mamine of Saint Laurent’s 1967 collection, noting he would disappear to Morocco each winter where he dreamed up his creations with pen and paper. Morocco was really an inspiration to him because he used to collect African art. So, he was really open worldwide to art and pop culture.
Saint Laurent, who had been a major fashion force throughout his career, sold YSL in 2002 and passed away brain cancer six years later. Deneuve, former First Lady Bernadette Chirac, former Iranian Empress Farah Pahlavi, French President Sarkozy, and his wife Carla Bruni were with him at his funeral. A few days prior, Saint Laurent and Bergé had been joined in a same-sex civil union. Bergé spoke at the service, saying, “I know that I will never forget what I owe you and that one day I will join you under the Moroccan palms.”
The is located at 3333 Avenue of the Arts in Costa Mesa, California.
