Remembering Yves Saint Laurent
Katie J. Parker
June 04, 2008
While Yves Saint Laurent may be gone, his legacy and memory remains. To many people, Saint Laurent was more than a designer. The fashion revolutionary, who died Sunday of a brain tumor, was responsible for creating iconic designs for over 48 years. In his own words, Saint Laurent aimed “to make women beautiful, but to reassure them, to give them confidence, to allow them to come to terms with themselves." And he did just that. Saint Laurent not only crossed traditional female fashion constraints by creating androgynous designs for women in the modern world, but he also traversed social and racial boundaries within the industry. In a tearful interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News, Naomi Campbell attributed Saint Laurent with propelling black models onto the runway. "My first Vogue cover ever was because of this man," Campbell said.
“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,’ he was like, ‘I’ll take care of that,’ and he did. He was the king of fashion.” Saint Laurent’s long-time partner Pierre Bergé credited the designer’s work with Coco Chanel for giving women freedom. “Yves Saint Laurent gave them power,” Bergé said. He also admired Saint Laurent’s character. “His strength meant I could rest on him when I was out of breath.” Perhaps this strength came from his attention to detail and his unconventional wisdom. When Saint Laurent retired in 2002, he said, “I tell myself that I created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman, that I participated in the transformation of my times.”
Be the first to chime in, leave a reply below or Login to save it to your profile.