Yves Saint Laurent piece from 1983

On the final day of the Prêt-à-Porter last month, I attended the opening reception for the Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective at the Petit Palais. It is so overwhelmingly beautiful, you can hardly take it in with just one visit. Paris-based journalist Nora Baldenweg went back to the Petit Palias after we visited that night, and she has written this piece on my behalf…

The Yves Saint Laurent Exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris is a superbly staged tribute to one of the most influential fashion designers of our time. It displays a panorama of the designer’s 40 years of creativity, with 15 thematic rooms to discover YSL’s evolution – from the opening of his fashion house in the 1960s to his very last parade in January 2002, four decades and 81 Haute Couture collections later.

A piece from the Dior years, 1958

Belle de jour, 1967

Offering a selection of nearly 300 Haute Couture and Ready-to-Wear garments – along with photos, drawings and films – the exhibition illustrates Yves Saint Laurent’s rich artistic journey, his unparalleled attention to detail, and his ongoing quest for renewal and refinement. Any trend you could possibly think of, it was done by YSL. There is literally no style he left unexplored: military, ethnic, arty, fun, romantic, sexy, striking – he did it all, encouraging women to embody their freedom of expression and giving them greater self-confidence.

Mondrian dress, 1965

Green fox fur coat, 1971

From his beginnings as a ’shy and lonely Algerian boy’ who ’sought refuge in his dreams of theater and fashion,’ to becoming Christian Dior’s successor in Paris, and then founding the House of Saint Laurent at age 25 with his life-long business and life partner Pierre Bergé, the exhibition charts YSL’s ascent to a huge and meaningful fashion empire. It includes iconic pieces such as the Mondrian Dress, the green fox fur coat, the cocoon wedding dress and the legendary safari jacket.

Premier Smoking jacket, 1966

Veruschka in YSL safari designs, 1968

There are also insightful video snippets and never-before-seen photos of his mythical (and at the time extremely daring) nude shoot with Jeanloup Sieff.

Famous nude portrait by Jeanloup Sieff

A big part of the exhibition is dedicated to Yves Saint Laurent’s legendary menswear-inspired pieces, which revolutionized women’s fashion forever. The retrospective has a vast assortment of trouser suits, shorts, tuxedos, jumpsuits, safari jackets, sailor coats and fisherman’s jackets – all emblematic of the way he shocked the world by sending ’male females’ down the Haute Couture runway.

Menswear-inspired looks

Pierre Bergé: If Chanel freed women, then Yves Saint Laurent gave them power.

Another important part of the exhibition is dedicated to the designer’s extensive mind travels. Throughout his 40 years of creation, most of his inspiration drew from his imagination and the knowledge he acquired from books. Although the only country he frequently visited was Morocco, he created incredibly detailed collections inspired by his knowledge of countries like India, Africa, Spain, Russia, China or Algeria.

Yves Saint Laurent: I use my imagination on countries I don’t know. I hate traveling. If I read a book about India, with photos, or Egypt, where I’ve never been, my imagination runs away with me. That’s how I make my most marvelous voyages.

Ball gowns

Exquisite eveningwear

The exhibition continues with an impressive collection of glamorous floor-sweeping ball gowns worn by dozens of mannequins on a large red staircase: ruffles, plunging necklines, bows, embellishments, feathers, puffs, pleats. Although some of the dresses are over 40 years old, they all seem so timelessly chic and modern.

The flamboyant and dreamy ballroom ends abruptly with a black wall covered in 40 black tuxedo variations. Black on black, they are merely illuminated by the faint flashes of little light bulbs. Throughout the years, Yves Saint Laurent created several hundred tuxedo variations, and they actually went on to become a symbol of his style.

Yves Saint Laurent: For a woman the tuxedo is indispensable: she will feel permanently in fashion because it is a style item, not a fashion one. Fashion changes, but style remains.

After that, the exhibition explodes into fireworks of colors, styles and textures with walls covered in hundreds of fabric samples gathered by Yves Saint Laurent over the years. The magnificent show ends with the display of his treasured good luck charm, a gleaming crystal heart brooch, which he attached onto a dress in every one of his 81 parades.

Yves Saint Laurent covered every style

Owing to the conviction of Pierre Bergé – who meticulously preserved all the major silhouettes, drawings and sketches since the very beginning of his career – the YSL retrospective takes its visitors on a breathtaking voyage through the mind of an ever-inspired fashion visionary whose collections shocked, astonished, fascinated, but always touched the people of his time.

The exhibition runs through August 29, 2010 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris in the Petit Palais. It has been produced in association with the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, under the patronage of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Thanks to Nora for her excellent report. Now click above to see footage from my visit to the exhibition on opening night. I arrived at the Petit Palais at the same time as Pierre Bergé and greeted him on my way in – it made this incredible show all the more special.

photos by Alexandre Guirkinger, courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent