Yves Saint Laurent, 1962

Yves Saint Laurent (August 1 1936 – June 1 2008) was a French fashion designer who was considered ‘one of the greatest figures in French fashion in the 20th century. He was the first living fashion designer to be honored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art circa 1983.

YSL’s noted creations include the “trapeze dress” from 1958 onwards, with a particularly noted incarnation as the “Mondrian dress“[1] in 1965 which adapted Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie painting; his “Le Smoking“, immortalized in a photograph by Helmut Newton[2] which anticipated the androgyny of the 1970s and his perfume “Opium” with an appropriately controversial ad campaign [3] photographed by Steven Meisel.

Laurent was the main couturier for Catherine Deneuve and dressed her in The Hunger and Belle de jour[4], and also did the costumes for Gérard Depardieu in Trop belle pour toi and dressed Claudia Cardinale in The Pink Panther.