Images of Yves in his
hippy deluxe period
preside over cabinets of
jewellery and
accessories,
like saints' relics
awaiting veneration
(right). Outside, the
museum's sybaritic
cafe courtyard is
landscaped with water
and planting to temper
Marrakesh's searing
heat and light
(opposite)
YSL aficionados. Marrakesh holds 250
pieces, rotated every four months according
to Berge's instructions. Within the black box
of the main exhibition space, dazzling
couture creations are mounted on rows of
slender mannequins. The effect is like a
flamboyant yet curiously inert cocktail
party. Elsewhere, jewellery and accessories
are arrayed in glass vitl·ines, like saints'
relics awaiting veneration from the faithful.
Superficially, there are parallels between
the design of buildings and clothes: cut, fit,
function, proportion and materiality, all
freighted with meaning and ideas. Both
fashion and architecture are also in thrall to
the trope of t he lone male genius, suavely
sketching incipient masterpieces that arethen brought into being by squads of loyal
but anonymous cadres. 'Fashions fade, style
is eternal' is a much quoted Saint Laurent
aphorism, but the modern fashion business
is predicated less glamorously on the
skewering of human insecurity and the
relentless commercial churn of acquisition
and disposal, with the commensurate
exploitation of people and resources.
On a larger scale, and with more profound
consequences, architecture is equally
motivated by such reductive instincts.
Within the museum's hushed and
tranquillised precincts, its marbled interiors
are coolly luxurious, like a silk lining, and
t here is little intimation of the outside
world's existential blare and clamour.These are, after all, fashion's Olympian
heights and the atmosphere is suitably
rarefied. Clothes magically morph into
being from the sinuous pencil lines of Saint
Laurent's sketches and fabric samples; there
is no sense of their protracted processes or
sites of construction. A typical couture dress
could take thousands of hours to make, but
we do not get to see behind the curtain.
Instead, we are simply spectators at an
unending catwalk, always looking and never
touching. It is an utterly singular vision.
'Yves met only one person in his life, and
that was himself', Pierre Berge once said.
'And he is bored with this person, but his
narcissism and his megalomania meant he
couldn't choose anyone else.'