In my last post about Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and my adventure with YSL I wrote so much about his incredible talent, uniqueness and my special admiration for him as a person who remained himself to the end. Today I want to focus more on the creative genius of someone who brilliantly climbed to the top of the fashion world and turned into one of the greatest couturiers of the twentieth century.

What is the most important, YSL, through his generous craftsmanship, was trying to change women’s attitudes in a way that has become a kind of sensation and an unrivaled object of imitation by others. The Saint Laurent look - which was fueled by strong personalities, such as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and the women in the couturier’s entourage - was defined by pronounced femininity drawing on figures ranging from the flapper to the femme fatale. At this point it’s worth to mention how Saint Laurent perfectly discovered the true essence of style by borrowed from menswear and modernized the female wardrobe. All the time he retained the same cut, comfort, and practical aspects of the menswear items that inspired him in approach that combined simplicity and elegance. As you can spot on my pictures, YSL continually reinterpreted the famous tuxedo, the pea coat, the trench coat, the jumpsuit, and the safari jacket. These new classics were first created before 1970, the same period as the start of the women’s liberation movement and the acknowledgement of their role in society.

“My dream is to provide women with the foundations of a classic wardrobe that escapes the fashion of the moment, giving them greater confidence in themselves.”

Yves Saint Laurent explored the history of fashion through his transcendent designs. He easily transformed pieces from the antique and the renaissance times into draped gowns. The use of luxurious fabrics and all-enveloping shapes, in which the body was unrestricted, went hand in hand with the strong interest in exoticism and the Orient influences. He focused on the bias cut of the silk satin, a technique developed by Madeleine Vionnet, that gave fabric more stretch and allowed it to freely follow the body’s curves. The designs that marked the twentieth century reflected the social changes and trends that punctuated it, creating a vision at once admiring and distant.

Throughout his career, accessories played extremely important role, making Saint Laurent’s signature style more desirable.

“I like a dress to be simple and an accessory to be crazy.” The truth is that no one could do it better than YSL.

In 1965, the biggest breakthrough took place and Yves Saint Laurent gained everything, creating his iconic pieces inspired by the painters Piet Mondrian and Serge Poliakoff. The whole collection, which was deemed revolutionary offered a modern, avant-garde style and immediately received positive response. The couturier sought to capture the spirit of the time by creating artistic designs that could move, with color everywhere. Turning painting into an animate work of art, marked a significant moment in the history of YSL himself, as well as history of fashion worldwide.

“For the first time in my last collection, I was inspired by Mondrian and Poliakoff, who interested me more because of their architectural side than their decorative element. To me, turning a Mondrian or a Poliakoff into a dress is about making their canvases move… They were extraordinarily rejuvenating and refreshing for me: they taught me purity, balance.” - Yves Saint Laurent