August 31, 2011 |
FROM THE VAULT (SUMMER 2011)
Yves Saint Laurent catapulted directly into the fashion stratosphere with a sensational debut for the House of Dior. At the age of 21, he saved the label with a brilliant display of dresses as perfectly shaped and constructed as the master’s, but Yves’s designs were literally several kilos lighter, totally in tune with the 1960s that were just beginning to swing. Despite the sustained abuse of drugs and alcohol, his genius flowered for 40 years. We talked to him through a special calla lily in his garden in Marrakech.
TEN: “Your beginnings at Dior were stranger than fiction. At 17, a boy from the provinces, you were hired on the spot by Dior when he saw your sketches, and then four years later, you took over the whole house, after his sudden demise.”
YSL: “I was from Oran, which was even lower than the provinces! Monsieur Dior took me under his wing and his sudden death was a terrible shock. But I was just a boy, I didn’t think about the responsibility on my shoulders. I just did what came naturally. I’d been rehearsing for this role since I was a child.”
TEN: “Apparently you were already advising your aunt on what she could and couldn’t wear when you were three and half.”
YSL: “Merde, that story has been told too many times. And then the hideous school in Oran, all those children of the pieds noirs who were so cruel to me because I was queer. But they are all dead now.”
TEN: “Your timing was perfect. Dior was an incredible couturier, the clothes look light and fantastical, but they were often literally heavy.”
YSL: “In the 1960s everyone wanted to wear less, not more… And Monsieur was running out of new ideas at the end. He was thinking of opening a restaurant, becoming a chef…”
TEN: “But you didn’t last long at Dior after that initial coup. Your beatnik collection, inspired by the students on the Left Bank, sent the owner, Marcel Boussac, into such a rage that he refused to prevent your conscription into the French army, which at the time was engaged in the Algerian War of Independence. You lasted 30 days and then had a major breakdown.”
YSL: “There, my troubles began. Boussac did not prevent it, certainly. And I should have been designing the uniform, not wearing one. The soldiers were very cruel, as young men being trained to kill tend to be. And then, in the hospital, the electroshock only made things worse. Those events truly damaged me. Pierre Bergé saved my life.”
TEN: “And yet you bounced right back. In fact, you sued Dior for breach of contract and won. With that money, you established your own couture house, with your lover Pierre as the accountant.”
YSL: “Pierre was furious at certain people who would not invest. They claimed to adore my work but were unwilling to invest a penny in my venture, terrified of losing their money. Of course, they were beside themselves later, when they saw how much money we made.”
TEN: “Yes, Pierre made you both fabulously rich. A very tempestuous relationship from what I hear, but he did right by you, even though he finally moved out in 1986.”
YSL: “Pierre was a volatile man, but he was very patient with me. He understood my talent and he helped me to channel and release it. He looked after me and stood by me through all the craziness.”
TEN: “You seem to have been at the height of your powers in the early 1970s, when you just kept rolling things out, all in the space of a few years.”
YSL: “I was truly inspired for a long period, the ideas were just pouring out. The Zeitgeist was residing inside my head. It was maddening and fabulous simultaneously. I am grateful to the Muses.”
TEN: “You created so many marvellous things before anyone else, transforming the most banal of everyday items into couture – ethnic peasant blouses, bolero jackets, trouser suits, smocks. Your archive must drive other designers insane. Everyone who followed you has either copied or appropriated at least a couple of your ideas.”
YSL: “Certain designers have done wonderful homages, and others, well, more crass imitations that only serve to water down the original until it’s potable by the commoners.”
TEN: “Between Le Smoking and putting women in trousers, you seemed to change the whole attitude of women in the 1970s. You appropriated classic men’s clothing and transformed it. Feminised it, as someone said.”
YSL: “‘Feminised’ – that’s such an ugly word, like ‘sanforised’ or ‘deodorised’. What my clothes did for women had nothing to do with feminism. Le Smoking was one of my favourites. Fantastic. And Helmut [Newton] made the perfect image for it, the slightly sapphic girl in the Parisian street at night. Did you see Deneuve in her double-breasted version? And Betty Catroux, who never wore anything beneath it. As Catherine said, this remade ‘menswear’ totally changes the gestures, the attitude of the woman wearing it. Wearing trousers had a similar effect, but not in a feminist sense – that was a misinterpretation. These clothes empowered women, but not in a way that threatened men, rather it supercharged their femininity.”
TEN: “It seems so quaint now that in the 1960s, women were banned from restaurants for wearing your trouser suits, and roundly denounced for wearing a transparent chiffon blouse.”
YSL: “And the breasts look so beautiful, just barely glimpsed like that. Some people are just terrified by naked beauty. I adore women’s bodies, even though I may not wish to sleep with them.”
TEN: “You claimed at one point to hate ‘le jet set’, and at another time you denounced bourgeois women with their pearl necklaces and their brooches and their perfectly coiffed hair. Was that revenge, to dress Catherine Deneuve as a classic femme bourgeoise in Belle de Jour? The clothes look so modern, even today. That outfit she’s wearing when she’s first looking for the address of the brothel on Cité Jean de Saumur… The porkpie hat, the dark coat and the patent leather shoes with the low heel, so bourgeois, perfect!”
YSL: “Yes, Catherine became my muse when we met on that film. An amazing creature. Through everything she has always remained a true friend and champion, even in my worst moments, always so calm and sane and sober.”
TEN: “You seem to inspire that in people. The 1970s and 1980s were an extended period of decadence in which you participated heavily, in alcohol, drugs, leather, nightclubs, orgies in Morocco, dancing boys, whatever. Although some people say you didn’t actually partake so much as you pretended.”
YSL: “I did my share, but there were always others around who did more, of course. Most of them didn’t have to work the next day, after hanging out at Le Sept until 5am.”
TEN: “In the 1980s things got very dark, you became ‘le grand malade,’ as the French press called you, a recluse, and spent a lot of time at your house in Marrakech. There was even a note in a guidebook warning tourists they might see a tall, dishevelled couturier stumbling through the souk with a bottle in one hand and a boy in the other.”
YSL: “Sssh! Don’t let Pierre hear you [Giggles.]. Yes, things became hard to bear in the late 1980s. And in the 1990s, too, as they tend to do when you’re constantly inhaling drugs and alcohol over a long period. Look at that poor boy Galliano. All this fame and attention exerts a terrible pressure… I never was big on le rehab, myself, but I wish John well.”
TEN: “In the 1980s you were the whipping boy for some of the fashion press, who seemed eager to write your fashion and literal obituary. Then they came whimpering back in the 1990s when they got sick of grunge. Do you think you read too much Proust, perhaps, along with the pills, identified too closely with his fragile hero, Swann?”
YSL: “One can never read too much Proust. I am still reading A la recherche du temps perdu, and it is still the most beguiling book in my library.”
TEN: “Cicero said, ‘all you need is a library and a garden’, and you have both. But Swann’s way doesn’t really gibe with your stated intention of wanting to be a beatnik, which seems more Kerouac than Proust.”
YSL: “I think I just said that to bother Karl [Lagerfeld]. Such an uptight German. We were friends once, but he never got over my winning the Wool Secretariat competition when we were both ambitious young boys. Things were quite brutal between our rival camps in the 1980s. Enfin he has outlived me, he’s very rich and very thin, and even seems happy with his lot, which has a price beyond rubies among creative queens.”
TEN: “You retired with grace in 2002, and you remain that unusual entity, a Frenchman revered beyond France. Was there anything you would have done differently?”
YSL: “I wouldn’t change a thing, except the collar on that one peasant blouse. And perhaps a few grams less of everything.”
by Max Blagg
