Yves Saint Laurent

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Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, who died in June 2008 at the age of 71, was not only the most influential designer of the second half of the twentieth century, he was also the most mythic: a dreamy, fragile creature with huge eyeglass frames (he wore nothing else in one iconic portrait) and a private life in frequent disarray. As his onetime companion (and later strictly business partner) Pierre Bergé put it, Saint Laurent was born with a nervous breakdown. Hailing from French-ruled Algeria, the designer started his business in Paris in 1961 with Bergé's financial backing. Saint Laurent was already a compelling figure, having been lionized as the savior of the house of Dior at the age of 21, and before long he was turning out couture collections—and then ready-to-wear, under the Rive Gauche label—that drew alternately aghast and enraptured headlines. The images from these vividly themed collections flash through the fashion history books like stills from a movie: the androgynous Weimar tuxedos of 1966, the midiskirts of 1971's reviled World War II show, the Cossack chic of 1976's sublime Ballets Russes collection. From the safari jacket and the peacoat to the famous Le Smoking, Saint Laurent's successes were so potent, they became absorbed into the common vernacular of late-century fashion. When it revived retro ideas, the house was in the vanguard of a trend that eventually became so mainstream that by the 1990's it was almost the only way to do fashion. By then Saint Laurent had largely retreated from the stage. Alber Elbaz and then Tom Ford tried their respective hands at a few ready-to-wear collections, while the couture operation was shuttered, to a sigh of Parisian nostalgia, in 2002. Today, however, the company is part of the Gucci Group, and chief designer Stefano Pilati is, shoulder pad by shoulder pad, reclaiming the house's rightful place on the cutting edge.

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