Yves Saint Laurent is retiring after a lifetime of placing himself "at the service of women, of their bodies, of their expressions". Robert O'Byrne assesses his impact
Thanking "all the women who wear my clothes", Yves Saint Laurent yesterday announced his retirement from haute couture and the closure of his famous house. The YSL ready-to-wear label, which was acquired three years ago by Gucci, will continue in business.
In his Paris salon yesterday, Saint Laurent read a prepared statement declaring that he had "important news that concerns my personal life and my profession . . . I have chosen today to say goodbye to this profession that I love so much."
Now aged 65, he will show his last couture collection for the coming spring/summer season at the Centre Pompidou in Paris next week.
This event will mark the 40th anniversary of the house of Saint Laurent and will be "in large part a retrospective of my work".
Summing up his career yesterday, he said: "I placed myself at the service of women, of their bodies, of their expressions. I tell myself that I created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman, that I participated in the transformation of my times."
While his retirement had been expected for some time, the closure of the house bearing his name and employing some 150 staff, has come as a surprise.
However, both Saint Laurent and his business partner Pierre Bergé made it clear that they believed no one could succeed the outgoing designer.
Bergé explained they were uncomfortable with fashion's present direction, describing it as an "era of marketing at the expense of creativity".
Certainly, the fashion industry has changed greatly since Yves Saint Laurent first joined it. In both his life and work, he has always exhibited a powerful streak of nostalgia, forever harking back to earlier times such as the fin de siécle era described in the work of Marcel Proust, his favourite author. And when, as a highly strung teenager, he first began to work in the field of fashion, many elements of Proust's world still survived, especially among couture's clientele.
For Saint Laurent, who was born and raised in the Algerian city of Oran, this world exercised a powerful allure and at the age of 18 he moved to Paris where he won first prize in an International Wool Secretariat competition. One of the other finalists was a young German called Karl Lagerfeld who for the past 19 years has been in charge of the house of Chanel.
Shortly afterwards, in 1955, Saint Laurent was offered a job with Christian Dior who had established his own couture house only eight years earlier. Dior had quickly become the most important designer in Paris, thanks to the espousal of his "New Look" by American fashion editors such as Irish-born Carmel Snow.
He gave Saint Laurent enormous encouragement so that when the older designer died after a heart attack in October 1957, his young protégé was offered the job of heading up the business.
Saint Laurent's first collection for Dior, in January 1958, met with immediate approval from both the press and public - in particular, his fluid Trapese Line dresses, which respected the late master's work but interpreted it in a more contemporary manner, were considered a triumph. One woman present at the show declared: "My dear, France is saved."
However, later collections were less well-received and when Saint Laurent suffered a nervous breakdown in 1960 after being called up for military service, the house of Dior announced it was appointing another designer to take charge.
Together with Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent responded by setting up his own couture house, the first collection of which was shown in January 1962.
By the time his second show was held later that year, the New York Times declared: "There is no doubt that Saint Laurent stands head and shoulders above most of the haute couture."
His consistent acclaim over the past 40 years has been due to a number of factors, the most important being the designer's technical skills which have allowed him to create clothing which flatter women through deft cutting and deployment of fabric.
In addition, Saint Laurent understood and responded to the changing status of his clientele; it was for this reason that he started his prêt-à-porter Rive Gauche line, the first outlet for which opened in September 1966. Similarly, the clothes he produced, such as his les smokings trouser suits which made their debut in autumn/winter 1966, acknowledged that women no longer necessarily wished to dress differently from men. Furthermore, his cultural interests have always been much broader than those of most members of the fashion industry, allowing him to design such iconic garments as the Mondrian-inspired shift dresses of autumn 1964 and the Ballets Russes collection first seen in autumn 1976.
For all his aesthetic awareness, however, Saint Laurent - along with Pierre Bergé - has shown a strong commercial sensibility through the licensing of his name for cosmetics and perfumes, the latter including such best-selling names as Rive Gauche and Opium.
But throughout his career he has been subject to periods of severe depression, as well as problems with drug dependency.
And for much of the past decade, the collections presented by him have been like the "Best of" albums produced by pop bands past their peak: a rehash of greatest hits from better times.
Having already sold the company's prêt-à-porter label to Gucci three years ago, it is therefore better that after four decades Saint Laurent now closes his haute couture house.
THOUGHTS OF YVES SAINT LAURENT
On Fashion:
"Black is my refuge, it is a line on a blank sheet of paper."
"The silhouette counts more than anything. It should never be overloaded. Too much fantasy will get in the way of the state of grace that is being sought."
"You must not become too attached to fashions and believe in them too much, that is to allow oneself to get carried away. You have to regard every fashion with humour, to be above it, believe in it enough to give the impression of living it but not too much, so that you keep your freedom."
"Is elegance not totally forgetting what one is wearing?"
On Women:
"I found my style through women. That's where its strength and vitality comes from, it is because I draw on the body of a woman."
"A woman who has not found her style, who does not feel at ease in her clothes, who does not live in harmony with them, is a sick woman. She is unsure of herself and has none of those characteristics which determine happiness."
"To be beautiful, all a woman needs is a black pullover and a black skirt and to be arm in arm with a man she loves."
"Nothing is more beautiful than the naked body. The most beautiful clothes a woman could wear are the arms of the man she loves. But for those who have not had the luck to find that happiness, I am there."