Yves Saint Laurent, who made tailoring sexy, was the first designer to put women in suits, writes Deirdre McQuillan, Fashion Editor.
YVES SAINT LAURENT, who died on Sunday night at his Paris home after a year-long battle with brain cancer, aged 71, was one of the greatest figures in 20th-century fashion, the first designer to take his cue from the street and from art, who created a uniform for women with tuxedos, safari jackets and Mondrian dresses.
The first to put women in suits, he understood the power of androgyny in dress, made tailoring sexy and shocked the public when he sent a model down the runway in a single-breasted jacket exposing a bare breast, a witty literal take on its conventional description. He was also the first to use black models.
An iconic photograph of a woman in a sleek pantsuit with slicked-back hair, smouldering cigarette in hand, taken in a night-time city street by Helmut Newton in l975, captured his subtle sophistication.
"Fashion is not exactly an art, but needs an artist to exist," he said in 2002 in a farewell speech.
His influence can be seen today on designers as diverse as Prada and Jean-Paul Gaultier, and the safari style which he pioneered 40 years ago remains a high-street staple. Even his "rich peasant" collection of l976 predates the currently popular "hippy chic" look.
Though he maintained that "good things never go out of fashion", he was, during most of his four-decade reign, daring and controversial. His dictates made headlines. Part of a generation that included Christian Dior and Gabrielle Chanel, his name and versatile vision kept Paris the centre of world fashion.
His greatest achievement was to bring high fashion to the street, re-energising what was outmoded in 50s style and making it relevant to a new generation.
Fuelled by the economic boom of the l960s and his relationship with his business partner and lover Pierre Bergé he made a huge fortune through the lucrative licensing of accessories and perfumes like Opium and Rive Gauche, setting the scene for what is now a global industry.
In later years, through illness and drug dependency, he seemed to lose touch with the contemporary mood, or maybe he no longer cared.
In l983 the New York Metropolitan mounted an exhibition of his work, the first ever devoted to a living designer, that went on to tour a number of international capitals. Five years later, 80,000 people watched a retrospective of his collections at the Stade de France on the eve of the World Cup final. He will be remembered particularly for dressing stars like Catherine Deneuve in many movies, particularly in Belle du Jour, along with other high-profile clients like Lauren Bacall, Bianca Jagger and Nan Kempner.
In Ireland, his stylish following included Margaret Heffernan of Dunnes Stores, who opened a Rive Gauche boutique in Molesworth Street in the l980s. The name YSL lives on, but is owned by the Gucci group, which purchased it in 1999.