French fashion legend Yves Saint Laurent, who changed the silhouette of 20th century woman with a daring new dress code, has died aged 71.
The reclusive Saint Laurent died at his Paris home of a brain tumour late Sunday after a prolonged illness and is to be buried Thursday, said his long-time partner Pierre Berge.
Mentally and physically frail through most of his life, the bespectacled Saint Laurent retired from haute couture in 2002 after a four decade career in which he dressed the likes of Catherine Deneuve, Paloma Picasso, Bianca Jagger and Lauren Bacall.
“I am shattered,” said Berge, who founded the iconic YSL fashion house in 1961 with the designer, then 25.
As tributes poured in from around the world to the tormented but visionary genius, Berge said women around the world owed Saint Laurent a debt for revolutionising their wardrobes.
“He was the first to put women in pants, the first to put them in tuxedos, the first to put them in masculine clothes, the first to employ black models,” he said. “He was audacious, he revolutionised the trade.”
“One of the greatest names of fashion has disappeared, the first to elevate haute couture to the rank of art,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife Carla Bruni is another Saint Laurent devotee.
“Yves Saint Laurent infused his label with his creative genius, elegant and refined personality, discreet and distinguished,” said Sarkozy in a statement.
British designer Vivienne Westwood described him as “one of the great couturiers, one of the few who have achieved perfection with everything they touched.”
One of a trio of great designers who dominated 20th century fashion, with Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent was born in Oran, Algeria, on August 1, 1936, when the North African country was a still French territory.
A shy lonely child born to a well-off family, he was taunted over his homosexuality and became fascinated by clothes.
He arrived in Paris in 1953, aged 17, with a portfolio of sketches and quickly persuaded Vogue editor Michel de Brunhoff to publish the images.
The following year Saint Laurent won three of the four categories in a Paris design competition — the fourth went to his rival Karl Lagerfeld, now at Chanel.
De Brunhoff advised Christian Dior to hire him and he rapidly became heir apparent to the great couturier, taking over the house when Dior died suddenly three years later.
However in 1960, Saint Laurent was called up to fight in his native Algeria, where an independence war was under way.
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