Yves Saint Laurent: A Biography - Rilegato

Rawsthorn, Alice

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0385476450 ISBN 13: 9780385476454

Casa editrice: Bantam Dell Pub Group, 1997

Riassunto

A behind-the-scenes look at the life and times of one of the fashion world's brightest stars details Saint Laurent's innovative collections, his multi-million-dollar fashion empire, and his turbulent private world of celebrities, glamour, drugs, and sex.

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The Paris of the early 1950s offered everything Yves had longed for in Oran. The intellectual life of the city had exploded after the rigours of the Occupation, and there was a resurgence of interest in the work of his favourite pre-war novelists and dramatists, AndrÚ Gide and Jean Anouilh. A new generation of younger writers was emerging: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus. The decorative arts were thriving. Yves's hero, Christian Berard, had died in 1949, but Cocteau and ClavÚ were still prolific. Roland Petit had breathed new life into ballet and French fashion was flourishing after the success of Christian Dior's "New Look" in 1947 and the work of his peers, Pierre Balmain and Cristobal Balenciaga. Even the social scene regained a whiff of its pre-war grandeur in the opulent soirÚes of the great hostesses, Marie-Laure de Noailles and Marie-Louise Bousquet, where France's oldest families mingled with the brightest young artists and any interesting American who happened to be visiting the city: from the writers, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, to the conductor, Leonard Bernstein.

Yves and Lucienne were outsiders in Paris. People from Algeria, even those with money and old Alsatian names, were pieds noirs to the French. The name pieds noirs, or "black feet", came from the clumpy black shoes that poor French farmers wore in North Africa. Lucienne and Yves spoke with the accents of wealthy pieds noirs, which, in Parisian eyes, placed them rather low in the social pecking order. But they were happy to be there and Lucienne showed Yves the city she remembered from childhood holidays with Aunt RenÚe, taking him for walks along the riverbank and for strolls around the shops. As was customary for the wife of a wealthy French businessman on a visit to the capital, she treated herself to a new outfit at one of the haute couture houses by ordering a gown from Jean Patou.

Before leaving for France, Lucienne had asked a family friend to arrange for Yves to meet Michel de Brunhoff, editor-in-chief of Paris Vogue. Yves was to show him his sketches and ask his advice about his chances of pursuing a career in theatrical design; or, in the wake his success in the International Wool Secretariat competition, as couturier. The interview was as much for Charles's benefit as for Yves's. Charles was happy to tolerate his son's passion for art as a hobby, but not as a career. Yves had always done well academically and his father wanted him to follow the family tradition--and to fulfill his own adolescent ambition--by becoming a lawyer. Knowing that Yves was determined to work in the arts, Lucienne hoped that the endorsement of an eminent man like Michel de Brunhoff might persuade her husband to change his mind.

Michel de Brunhoff was one of the most powerful figures in French fashion and a member of the artistic Parisian circle that seemed so enticing to Yves. His brother, Laurent, was the author of the Babar children's books and Michel himself a confidant of Christian Dior, Jean Cocteau and, before his death, of Christian BÚrard. He had ruled the roost at Paris Vogue since the 1930s and under his editorship it became the arbiter of French chic. "Vogue was very Úlitist," observed Marie-JosÚ Lepicard, one of his young writers. "Michel de Brunhoff insisted that everything was done absolutely correctly. The fashion editors were expected to dress immaculately, like models. We wore tailored suits with gloves buttoned up to our elbows, full make-up and Joy perfume, probably because it was the most expensive. When I went to work for Vogue the first things I bought were a pair of gloves and a bottle of Joy."

Despite his lofty status, Michel de Brunhoff was a kindly man who was happy to help talented youngsters. He had a bluff, almost comical appearance, with a round face, bushy eyebrows and tufts of white hair around his bald pate. Too short and plump for conventional elegance, he dressed like Winston Churchill in double-breasted suits with a white handkerchief sprouting out of the breast pocket, occasionally topped off by a bowler hat. It was typical of him to have found the time to see the wife of an obscure Orani businessman and her shy seventeen-year-old son. He thought Yves's sketches were excellent and said so, but advised him that, although he might well have a dazzling career in Paris, he should first go back to school and pass his baccalaurÚat. If he was serious about a career in fashion, Yves could then return to Paris and enroll in one of the design courses run by the industry body, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture. Lucienne was thrilled. Her son was as talented as she had thought, but she would not have to part from him; at least, not for a while. They returned to Oran hoping Charles would be swayed by Michel de Brunhoff's encouragement.

Charles knew when he was beaten. He found it difficult enough to stand up to his wife, but Yves was impossible; even as a child, he had an imperious side. Besides, the opinions of a man like Michel Brunhoff were not to be taken lightly, his advice to Yves seemed sensible and all Charles had ever really wanted was for his children to be happy. "Yves was never influenced by anyone," he told American Vogue years later. "I'd say it was his mother who was influenced by him. As for me, I've always believed that a child should be allowed to do what he wants in life. What matters is that he wants to do something."

Yves reapplied himself to his studies--with escape in sight, even school did not seem so grim. He spent his evenings and weekends working on new sketches of dresses and theatre sets, sending off a batch of drawings to Michel de Brunhoff in early 1954, a few months after their meeting in Paris. De Brunhoff wrote back in a kindly but instructive manner. "Dear sir, I find your designs most interesting, and can only repeat what I told you when you were in Paris, that your gift for fashion is beyond doubt. I have marked with a cross those of your designs that I find most successful. If I were you, I would take advantage of this year when you are relatively free of other commitments to work from nature--landscape, still life, portraits, as well as fashion models. As a matter of fact, I am rather afraid that your particular talents do not encourage you to work hard enough in your drawing. I can see that you are still influenced by BÚrard. All to the good--he was one of my oldest friends, and you could not choose a better master. But I should tell you that he did work hard at his drawing, and the few wonderful portraits he left behind him--remarkable portraits--are inclined to make one sorry that he devoted the end of his life solely to scenery and costume for the theatre and to fashion."

Yves waited to reply until he had received the results of his baccalaurÚat. "Dear sir, I am sorry not to have written back sooner, but I wanted to wait for the results of my examination before doing so. As I had hoped, they proved entirely satisfactory and I am to move to Paris at the beginning of the autumn. Perhaps my plans are too ambitious. Like BÚrard, I want to focus on a number of different activities which are really all parts of one thing--that is, scenery, costumes, decoration and illustration for the theatre. On the other hand, I am very much drawn to fashion. No doubt my career will develop naturally out of one or the other of these areas. In any case do you still think I should start by attending the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture? If you think otherwise, I should be grateful if you would tell me."

Charles enrolled his son in the Chambre Syndicale course starting in autumn 1954. Michel de Brunhoff had convinced him that Yves really did have a flair for design, and Charles had abandoned any hope of his going into the law. He had another reason for sending his eighteen-year-old son away from Algeria--the violent clashes between Muslim nationalists and the French forces, which threatened to plunge Algeria into a colonial war.

Until then Algeria had seemed more stable than France's other colonies. There had been nationalist protests in Morocco, Tunisia and Indo-China since the 1920s, but the French influence was stronger in Algeria as the European population was so large that it was more difficult for the nationalists to build a political base there. By 1954 Muslim militants were stepping up their attacks on French targets across North Africa and the violence had spread to Algeria. Early that year France retreated from Indo-China after a brutal defeat by the Vietnamese nationalists at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and by summer it was preparing to withdraw from Morocco and Tunisia. The prospect of an independent Algeria no longer seemed improbable. Muslim militants were rallying behind the National Liberation Front, which was committed to expelling the French by force. Anxious to avoid seeing Yves conscripted into the French army, it seemed to Charles that sending him away to study in Paris was a sensible solution.

Yves set off for France that September; this time he travelled alone. Lucienne arranged for him to rent a room in the apartment of a family friend, the widow of a general, on Boulevard Pereire in the seventeenth arrondissement, a quiet residential district north of the Arc de Triomphe. He set off from there each day to his classes at the Chambre Syndicale school on rue Saint-Roch, a road running down to the Tuileries Gardens.

Yves disliked his lodgings and was bored by the course, "learning about the right thread, the cut, all the little things like that". But he found a kindred spirit among his fellow-students in Fernando Sanchez, an ebullient young Spaniard. A flamboyant figure, Fernando was as tall and spindly as Yves, with wiry curls and a foppish dress sense. His father had died when he was young, leaving him to be brought up by his Belgian mother, a wealthy woman who pampered ...

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

aurent is arguably the greatest fashion designer of this century. World-renowned since the age of twenty-one, when he shot to fame as the savior of Christian Dior, he has changed the way that women dress with a series of innovations--from trouser suits and leather boots to peasant shawls and safari jackets--now regarded as classics. His business empire has become a role model for the fashion and beauty industries, establishing Rive Gauche as the first chain of ready-to-wear boutiques, launching Opium as a bestselling perfume, and opening up the vast Asian market.

Raised in colonial Algeria, Saint Laurent was taken on by Dior as an assistant while studying in Paris as a teenager. Hailed as a hero in France for saving the company after Dior's death, his world collapsed when he was conscripted into the French army. Saint Laurent broke down and was committed to a military hospital where he was brutally treated. His lover, Pierre BergÚ, rescued him and set him up in his own c

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Bantam Dell Pub Group
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385476450
• ISBN 13: 9780385476454
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 405