Yves Saint Laurent retrospective, Petit Palais, March 11 – August 29
Undeniably, a retrospective of the French fashion legend, Yves Saint Laurent, to be opened at Petit Palais, will be the highlight of the fashion scene this spring and surely among the most attended exhibitions of French fashion Mecca. Yves Saint Laurent passed away on June 1, 2008 at the age of 71, and this will be the first retrospective after his death. The exhibition will comprise over 300 gowns from haute couture and prêt-à-porter collections, spanning 40 decades of the designer's creative career, featuring its growth over the years - from the young Saint Laurent's first collection for the House of Dior, in 1958, to the last, farewell one, in 2002. The exhibition will feature also films and photos.
Saint Laurent was born into a well-off French colonial family, in Algeria. His mother was a beauty, his father owned a chain of cinemas, but his grandfather was a lawyer who once had drawn up a wedding contract between Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine. At the age of 10, he promised himself that he will become famous one day and his name will gleam in the lights of Champs-Élysées. At the age of 17 he designed a cocktail dress and won the 1st prize at the International Wool Secretariat contest. Christian Dior noticed the young talent, and Saint Laurent became one of his assistants. Not so long, in 1957, the creator of the New Look died of a heart attack, and the young king mounted the fashion throne. He was only 21 then and violated all the existing fashion taboos of that time, brought street-fashion inspired collections onto the haute couture scene and offered Dior adoring ladies black leather. It did not last very long, however, as soon he was conscripted into the French army and suffered a subsequent nervous breakdown.
After his returning, on January 29, 1962, Saint Laurent opened up his own fashion house. YSL brand flourished in the 60s and reached the peak of the fame in the 70s. If Coco Chanel liberated women of their corsets in the beginning of the 20th century, changing forever the way they dress, Saint Laurent did the rests - he added elegance, confidence and sexuality to their attire. In fact, all the further efforts in the field of fashion until nowadays, with few exceptions, can be called citations. Already by the end of the 70s, Saint Laurent had become a living legend, widely quoted and referred to in the past tense. He blurred the borderline between fashion and art, creating collections inspired by great painters - Goya, Piet Mondrian and Picasso. In 1966, Saint Laurent designed his famous tuxedo for women, Le Smoking, but in 1971 - a striped suit for men, immortalized in Helmut Newton's photos that instantly became classic. Yet later on Saint Laurent admitted that he was particularly proud about Le Smoking.
In 1966, the couturier introduced a ready-to-wear collection. He was the leader of "beautiful people", the king of hippies and a fine connoisseur of glam-rock. He launched into fashion street styles and folk elements, along with an exotic twist of Africa and impressions of his beloved Marrakech. In 1968, appeared his famous giraffe motif, but in 1976, the iconic Russian collection with Cossack coats and rural imagery, still considered to be one of his best collections ever.
In 1983, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exposition Yves Saint Laurent 25 years of Design. It was the first-ever retrospective of a living designer. The only regret, as the brilliant designer once said in an interview, was that he didn't invent jeans.
In 2002, Saint Laurent left the fashion scene for good. After the retirement, he established Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, together with his long-term life and business partner Pierre Bergé. It provided a venue for diverse art and fashion exhibitions regularly taking place there. The designer himself, however, suffering from health issues and fighting his personal demons, became more and more reclusive.
A huge publicity achieved an auction of the unique art collection, which had belonged to the late designer and his lifelong partner Pierre Bergé, organized at Christie's in 2009. More than 690 artworks went up for sale, including famous painting by Matisse, Braque, Gauguin, Degas, Mondrian, Ingres, Cézanne and Picasso. In spite of the global economic crises, the results of the sale exceeded the very highest expectations. The proceeds were donated to benefit HIV research and the fight against AIDS, and the grave aftermath brought by this illness to African continent.
The exhibition at Petit Palace is organized in cooperation between the Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent Foundation and the city museum Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.
2 Avenue Winston Churchill
75008, Paris
www.petitpalais.paris.fr
Foto © The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff
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D.E.
Visited: March 31,2010
Great exhibit! An absolute must!
I got the tickets on line before leaving L.A. which is a must. There were lots of people waiting in a very long line without tickets and trying to get in. It's the talk of Paris.
I used a French website www.b12-gatweb.paris.fr. I believe the website was posted on www.yslretrospective.com. I paid by credit card (11 Euros per ticket) and then printed my tickets. I took all the additional
paperwork with me in case it was asked for. My friend and I were allowed to bypass the long line outside and were the only two people let in.
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