The work of most artists is not much recognized. Those who are recognized usually have to wait a while, often a long while, to come into the notoriety they have always been seeking. But in November 1957, when Yves Saint Laurent was 21-years-old, he was named chief fashion designer for the House of Dior, at the time one of the premier couture firms in the world, after the death of its founder Christian Dior. He had been named to the post by Dior himself a few days before his passing. Saint Laurent’s ascendancy was therefore almost immediate, and he remained world-famous until his death on June 1, 2008
The De Young Museum in San Francisco is currently showing an exhibition of Yves Saint Laurent’s haute couture fashion, through April 5, 2009. The show was organized by The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (under Director John Buchanan) and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent. It is simply a stunning show, in which the astonishing range of Saint Laurent’s esthetic sensibility is amply displayed.
He was capable of designing the simplest of black mini-dresses as well as the most complicated of formal evening gowns, and of many thousands of articles of dress — all of revolutionary design — in between, of whole lines based on Russian themes, beatnik themes, peasant themes, African themes, and countless others. His sense of color and cloth allowed him to show how profound beauty can be shown through the placing of disparate — not to say clashing — values, one next to the other. Sometimes his designs were spare, almost Chanel-like in their simplicity. Other times, there was an over-the-top theatricality to his work — shot through with pattern, mad color and deft, breath-taking nerve — that nonetheless never crosses the line into bombast or cheap thrills.
Daytime ensemble. Fall-Winter 1989. Foundation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent.
Photo: Alexandre Guirkinger.
It is unnerving to consider that the same person who designed straight-forward clothing, in which a fashion-conscious woman could sit down for lunch with a friend, also was capable of a chiffon gown and a coat that is a firework-display of feathers, all put together for the most formal of occasions. In the one outfit she is elegant, controlled, clear-minded, and reserved. In the other, when she walks into a room, she seems to flame and roil in browns, yellows, reds, and golds. She is utterly fantastic in the true sense of the word.
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