Its to no suprise that my heart goes out to a man who is has and will always been an inspiration to my daily life.
Interview with Susy Menkes
So after all the false reports over the years of Saint Laurent’s passing, it’s finally true.
Yes, the rumor had been going around Paris and I sort of knew it was imminent. But when Pierre Bergé went to Canada last week, I thought it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. But there you are. He’s certainly going to be missed.
It’s a testament to his genius that many of the ideas that he sewed in his youth have been so co-opted by the mainstream that they have become it.
I think it’s so hard for anybody to understand now how revolutionary his ideas were. The idea of wearing pants to the office! And the stories are legion. Nan Kempner wore one of the first Saint Laurent trouser suits to one of those fancy Madison Avenue restaurants and was denied access. She famously took off her pants and walked in wearing only the jacket. And it was that kind of revolution that was echoed in fashion and in life.
It’s easy to forget that the concepts of ready-to-wear clothing and men’s wear were practically unheard of before him — as were licensing deals and “out” gay designers.
Absolutely. The fact that the French have been celebrating this past month the May 1968 riots is sort of brought home by thinking of Saint Laurent in that era. I was very young and even though I wasn’t actually demonstrating, I just felt that Saint Laurent was so in tune with what I and my generation wanted to wear and do. It was that sense of freedom — breaking through the barriers of convention, of class, of all sorts of things. And the clothes just went with it.
A lot of people, especially those who were introduced to him as an aging designer, forget that in his prime he was so adept at reading the Zeitgeist. For over four decades he embraced and referenced everything from Beat culture to drag culture, street fashion to menopausal chic — often to be met with opprobrium from the public and fashion industry alike.
What seems strange about Saint Laurent is that I don’t think he referenced what was going on in the same was as, say, Marc Jacobs references things today. It was something that was inside of him, inside his well-spring of creativity. He famously did a Porgy and Bess collection never having been to America, let alone to the South. And when he did that Russian collection — the one that was so amazing to me, the one that was full of Russian color taken to a luxury level — he had never been to Russia.
I have special memories of that collection because I was standing there, as everybody was, with my hands over my head clapping as these incredible clothes came down. It was hippy deluxe to the nth degree — the colors, the fabrics and the decorations. And, at the end of it all, beside me was a quite elderly woman with gray-rinsed hair. She turned and said in a bewildered way to the world, “No blazers! No blazers from Yves Saint Laurent!”
And that was the measure of the guy. You know, he could completely overturn his own inclinations and still be completely spot-on with what was going on in the world.
Yes, the rumor had been going around Paris and I sort of knew it was imminent. But when Pierre Bergé went to Canada last week, I thought it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. But there you are. He’s certainly going to be missed.
It’s a testament to his genius that many of the ideas that he sewed in his youth have been so co-opted by the mainstream that they have become it.
I think it’s so hard for anybody to understand now how revolutionary his ideas were. The idea of wearing pants to the office! And the stories are legion. Nan Kempner wore one of the first Saint Laurent trouser suits to one of those fancy Madison Avenue restaurants and was denied access. She famously took off her pants and walked in wearing only the jacket. And it was that kind of revolution that was echoed in fashion and in life.
It’s easy to forget that the concepts of ready-to-wear clothing and men’s wear were practically unheard of before him — as were licensing deals and “out” gay designers.
Absolutely. The fact that the French have been celebrating this past month the May 1968 riots is sort of brought home by thinking of Saint Laurent in that era. I was very young and even though I wasn’t actually demonstrating, I just felt that Saint Laurent was so in tune with what I and my generation wanted to wear and do. It was that sense of freedom — breaking through the barriers of convention, of class, of all sorts of things. And the clothes just went with it.
A lot of people, especially those who were introduced to him as an aging designer, forget that in his prime he was so adept at reading the Zeitgeist. For over four decades he embraced and referenced everything from Beat culture to drag culture, street fashion to menopausal chic — often to be met with opprobrium from the public and fashion industry alike.
What seems strange about Saint Laurent is that I don’t think he referenced what was going on in the same was as, say, Marc Jacobs references things today. It was something that was inside of him, inside his well-spring of creativity. He famously did a Porgy and Bess collection never having been to America, let alone to the South. And when he did that Russian collection — the one that was so amazing to me, the one that was full of Russian color taken to a luxury level — he had never been to Russia.
I have special memories of that collection because I was standing there, as everybody was, with my hands over my head clapping as these incredible clothes came down. It was hippy deluxe to the nth degree — the colors, the fabrics and the decorations. And, at the end of it all, beside me was a quite elderly woman with gray-rinsed hair. She turned and said in a bewildered way to the world, “No blazers! No blazers from Yves Saint Laurent!”
And that was the measure of the guy. You know, he could completely overturn his own inclinations and still be completely spot-on with what was going on in the world.
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