style, into the famous interlinked 'YSL' logo.
As an example of product placement, it was,
as the French say, sans pareil. Yves Saint
Laurent was France and France was Yves
Saint Laurent. His likeness was even
engraved on a special edition of franc coins
to mark t he millennium.
By then, however, France's 'last living
king' of couture was burnt out, enervated
and depressed, while younger pretenders
like Tom Ford were snapping at his heels.
I n 2002 he announced his retirement from
haute couture. 'I went through much anxiety
and many hells', he said at his valedictor y
press conference. 'I knew fear and terrible
isolation. J!Iarcel Proust taught me that "the
magnificent and pitiful family of neurotics is
~! A 1 1
the salt of the earth".' France was shocked,
but six years later the king was dead.
Yet the world is not allowed to forget
Yves, the tortured genius who 'liberated'
women through the trapeze line, the
Mondrian shift, Le Smoking, safari suits, pea
coats and Ballets Russes excess. Who
dressed Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour)
and Mick and Bianca for their chaotic San
Tropez wedding~ ~Tho partied ·with vVarhol
and was photographed naked by J eanloup
Sieff? Who popularised pret-a-porter and
made high fashion affordable~ vVho became
rich as Croesus, yet was still a deeply
disturbed soul, relying, as he put it, on 'the
fake friends of tranquilizers and narcotics' to
get through t he day~ A martyr to the