The Dior years 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 on June 20, 1955. "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.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. Some Dior collections from this period contain themes that would appear in Saint Laurent's independent work years later, such as the smock tops and safari jackets in Dior's 1957 "Libre" line. 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. She claimed 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, at 21 years old, Saint Laurent became the head designer of the House of
Dior. His spring 1958 collection almost certainly saved the enterprise from financial ruin. 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 his second collection for Dior, presented for fall 1958, he iconoclastically lowered hemlines by three to five inches and was not greeted with the same level of approval that his first collection received, with some attendees and buyers considering it a major misstep. Soon after,
Marc Bohan was hired to assist Saint Laurent, and the spring 1959 Dior collection brought lengths back to the knee in a well-received collection inspired by the 1930s, noted for its suits and sailor collars. 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, then a student in Paris, to design her wedding dress for her marriage to the
Shah of Iran. His fall 1959 Dior collection focused on a skirt shape that bloused over a narrow band that hit at mid-knee for daywear and flared below the knee to the floor for evening dresses. At least one skirt of similar shape had appeared at Dior for fall of 1955, soon after Saint Laurent's arrival, and skirts of this form had been shown by
Simonetta in 1957 and '58 and by Traina-Norell in 1958, but Saint Laurent's 1959 versions were criticized for being both too short and too restrictive, "hobble skirts," a term that had long been used for
tight-kneed fifties skirts. The silhouette fit trends of the time also conveyed by
Simonetta and Patrick de Barentzen and included some high collars covering part of the face, dark jewels worn high around the throat, India-inspired eveningwear, and jeweled bouffant coiffures. He also showed a few skirts in other silhouettes. His spring 1960 Dior collection did not attract as much attention, as it seemed more sedate and focused on Saint Laurent's expert suits, middy details, and full smocks over narrow skirts. '', 1961 Saint Laurent's fall 1960 collection for Dior became his most controversial for the house. The dresses this time were a narrow but not fitted column that expanded into a slight pouf skirt below the hips and ended at the top of the knee, scandalously short for the time. The inspiration was the bohemian dress of young intellectuals and artists and outfits were given names that reflected this, such as a turtleneck outfit named after a trendy café and an evening dress named after a
New Wave film. Other garments were modeled after bikers' black leather jackets, remade in crocodile and mink, and the showing closed with a group of at-home ensembles consisting of palazzo pants and fur pullovers. The line's unconventional look was considered inappropriate for the mature clientele of the haute couture, and the collection would be his final one for Dior. In 1960, Saint Laurent was conscripted to serve in the
French Army during the
Algerian War. Saint Laurent was in the military for 20 days before the stress of
hazing by fellow soldiers led to him being admitted to a military hospital. There he received news that he had been fired from Dior and replaced by
Marc Bohan. This exacerbated his condition, and he was transferred to
Val-de-Grâce military hospital, where he was given large doses of sedatives and psychoactive drugs and subjected to
electroshock therapy. Saint Laurent himself traced the origin of both his mental problems and his drug addictions to this time in hospital.
The YSL years After his release from the hospital in November 1960, Saint Laurent sued Dior for
breach of contract and won. After a period of convalescence, he and his
partner, industrialist
Pierre Bergé, started their own fashion house,
Yves Saint Laurent or YSL, with funds from American millionaire
J. Mack Robinson, cosmetics company
Charles of the Ritz, and others. A number of Dior staff joined him at his new enterprise. His debut collection, presented for spring 1962, was noted for its pea coats and suits and included early examples of the cut-outs that would be popular in fashion in a few years, but it received mixed reviews. His second collection, for fall 1962, was celebrated as his best since his 1958 Trapeze collection for Dior. Fashion writers ranked the collection with those of
Givenchy and
Balenciaga as among the best in Paris. It featured India-inspired evening dress, a mostly dark, rich color palette, couture adaptations of traditional pea coats and fishermen's smocks (a theme seen as early as 1957 in his work for
Dior), and a refinement of the bohemian influences seen in his fall 1960 Dior collection, evoking in a number of journalists' minds Paris's
Left Bank. In the 1960s, Saint Laurent introduced or contributed to
fashion trends such as the
beatnik look (1962), pea coats (1962), smock tops (1962-63),
thigh-high boots (1963, via his chosen shoe designer
Roger Vivier), the
Le Smoking women's tuxedo suit (1966),
platform shoes (1967, courtesy of
Roger Vivier), and safari jackets for men and women (1967). Throughout the 1960s, Saint Laurent followed the international youth culture taking shape, a tendency already evident in his fall 1960 Dior collection. Like designers and others of the period, he kept an eye on the pace-setting streets of London and also on the hippie movement emanating from the US. He responded to the spare precision of
André Courrèges's groundbreaking
1964 and '65 Space Age designs with the now-famous stark, geometric shift dresses of his 1965
Mondrian collection but faltered a bit with the slightly passé
Pop Art dresses in his autumn 1966 line. He was the first French
couturier to come out with a full
prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) line; although
Alicia Drake credits this move with Saint Laurent's wish to democratize fashion; others point out that other couture houses were preparing
prêt-à-porter lines at the same time – the House of Yves Saint Laurent merely announced its line first. The purpose of the
prêt-à-porter line was to provide a wider range of fashionable styles being available to choose from in the market, as they were affordable and cheaper. The first Rive Gauche boutique, dedicated to the
prêt-à-porter line, opened on the rue de Tournon in the
6th arrondissement of Paris, in September 1966. An early customer was Catherine Deneuve, for whom Saint Laurent later designed costumes in films including
Belle de Jour (1967),
Heartbeat (1968),
and Mississippi Mermaid (1969). In 1967, Éditions Tchou published a book by Saint Laurent,
La Vilaine Lulu (
The Villain Lulu), a collection of comic strips featuring a cruelly mischievous little girl named Lulu that the designer had been sketching since 1956, when he had been inspired by a costume worn by one of
Dior's colleagues. The child engages in pranks ranging from abusing hospital patients to defiling
André Courrèges's pristine white salon with black paint. The revolutionary societal movements of the time transformed Saint Laurent's thinking and he began to base his work more on what women were actually wearing than on abstract ideas in his head. A number of his designs were inspired by women's lives in the sociopolitical climate of the time, particularly the trousers he showed in 1968 after witnessing the epochal
French uprisings of that year. Saint Laurent is often said to have been the main designer responsible for making women wearing pants more widely acceptable, after
André Courrèges made the first strides in that direction in 1964. The social transformations of the late 1960s also influenced how Saint Laurent himself dressed, as he wore more relaxed clothes reflecting the era's youth movements and let his hair grow. His new personal wardrobe led to him presenting his first men's ready-to-wear collection in 1969. evening trouser-suitsIn September 1968, Saint Laurent opened the first Rive Gauche store in the United States on
Madison Avenue in Manhattan. During this trip Saint Laurent and his entourage were denied entry to
Trader Vic's restaurant because the women were wearing pants. During the 1970s, Saint Laurent came to be considered the most prominent designer in the world, adapting his designs to modern women's needs. Though
Karl Lagerfeld and
Jean Muir occasionally approached him in critical appraisal and popularity, Saint Laurent remained the strongest influence on fashion throughout the decade, an era when the societal advances of the 1960s required designers to defer to the public's demands for practicality and comfort. Even in his sometimes lavish Russian peasant collections of the middle of the decade, the clothes themselves remained comfortable and wearable. His controversial spring 1971 collection was inspired by 1940s fashion. Some felt it romanticized the
German occupation of France during World War II, which he did not experience, while others felt it brought back the unattractive utilitarianism of the time. The French newspaper
France Soir called the spring 1971 collection "Une grande farce!"His spring 1971 couture collection marked other changes. Now that the liberatory trends of the 1960s and early '70s had become established, with women released from constricting undergarments and free to wear trousers in all settings and men also free to be more casual in their dress, advances aided in no small part by Saint Laurent, he shed some of the less appealing aspects of the youth culture of that period, particularly after losing a couple of young friends to the drug experimentation of the time. While still exhibiting the pervasive relaxed, casual look, by 1972, he had begun to cut his hair and shave again and discarded the well-worn jeans and shoelessness. Saint Laurent had nurtured his ready-to-wear to the extent that it now eclipsed the haute couture in prominence. In 1971, amidst heavy criticism of his 1940s-themed collection, he threatened to end his couture services entirely. Instead, Saint Laurent and a few others declared in early 1972 that they would now show their couture pieces with their
prêt-á-porter, but soon Saint Laurent began to worry publicly that the craftsmanship of the couture might be lost, as well as the livelihoods of those who depended on him, and he decided to carry on holding separate couture presentations. While the
prêt-à-porter line became extremely popular with the public and eventually earned many times more for Saint Laurent and Bergé than the
haute couture line, Saint Laurent's decision to continue producing haute couture lines resulted in some landmark collections as well during the 1970s, most famously the fall 1976 Russian Peasant collection, which brought the popular peasant silhouette of the time to a peak of exotic luxury, but also his spring 1978 Broadway Suit presentation, which inspired the fashion industry to move toward wide,
padded shoulders. However, Saint Laurent, whose health had been precarious for years, became erratic under the pressure of designing two
haute couture and two
prêt-à-porter collections every year. In 1976, Saint Laurent and Bergé ended their romantic relationship but remained business partners. Saint Laurent increasingly turned to alcohol and drugs. At some shows, he could barely walk down the runway at the end of the show, and he had to be supported by models. Saint Laurent is credited with initiating in 1978 the prominently
shoulder-padded styles that would characterize the 1980s. He then relied on a restricted set of looks based largely on big-shouldered jackets and narrow skirts and trousers that wouldn't vary much for a decade, resulting in some fashion writers bemoaning the loss of his former inventiveness and others welcoming the familiarity. Where in the 1960s and '70s his work had reflected the democratizing trends of the time, during the 1980s his work conformed more to the tastes of the wealthy as social inequality increased in society. His broad-shouldered wardrobe basics now seemed geared more to the ladies-who-lunch set than the liberated, casual young women he had been inspired by in the earlier 1970s, and his work was now often grouped with that of
Givenchy,
Valentino,
Oscar de la Renta, and similar designers. He was noted in the early 1980s for his short, slim, sleek black leather skirts, with versions in metallic gold leather receiving raves from socialites in 1981. After helping bring ready-to-wear to mass acceptance earlier in his career and nearly abandoning haute couture in the early 1970s, during the 1980s, with the nouveaux riches in ascendance and demanding showpieces, he refocused on his couture lines, to the extent that observers felt that his
prêt-á-porter was being neglected. He was one of the last designers to give up big shoulder pads at the end of the eighties. After a show in New York City, which featured US$100,000 jeweled casual jackets only days after the
"Black Monday" stock market crash in 1987, he turned over the responsibility of the
prêt-à-porter line to his assistants. In 1993, the Yves Saint Laurent business was sold to Sanofi. He became increasingly reclusive, but continued to design the couture collection until he retired 2002.
Muses for a Safari jacket A favorite among his female clientele, Saint Laurent had a number of muses who inspired his work. Among them were French model
Victoire Doutreleau, who opened his first fashion show in 1962;
Loulou de la Falaise, daughter of a French marquis and an Anglo-Irish model, who later became a jewelry designer for the brand;
Betty Catroux, and Italian model
Marina Schiano, who later managed YSL boutiques in North America. and American-French artist
Niki de Saint Phalle, both of whom inspired the Le Smoking suit; and
Warhol superstar Donna Jordan, who inspired his spring 1971 collection. He also worked closely with Mounia,
Lucie de la Falaise, a Welsh-French model and niece of Loulou, who served as the bride in his shows from 1990 to 1994; and French model
Laetitia Casta, who assumed the same role from 1998 to 2001. Additional muses included jewelry designer
Paloma Picasso; American socialite
Nan Kempner, who was later named an ambassador for the brand; and French model Nicole Dorier, who became director of his runway shows and later served as the "memory" of the house when it became a museum. == Death ==