Yves Henri Donat Mathé-Saint-Laurent was born in 1936 in Oran, French Algeria, to a French-born mother and a father who managed an insurance firm. He drew dresses compulsively from the age of three. At seventeen he won first prize at the International Wool Secretariat competition; at twenty-one, in 1957, he inherited the House of Dior.

Dior, and the Algerian War

His first collection, the Trapeze line of 1958, was a commercial triumph. His second was less well received. In 1960 he was conscripted into the French army during the Algerian War, suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalised and dismissed from Dior. He sued; he won. Within a year he had, with his partner Pierre Bergé, founded his own house.

Rive Gauche

In 1966 Saint Laurent opened Rive Gauche, a ready-to-wear boutique on the rue de Tournon. It was the first such venture by a couture house. Ready-to-wear had, until then, been considered declassé; by the 1970s it was the industry’s primary economic engine. Saint Laurent had, almost single-handedly, concluded the argument.

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Fashions fade, style is eternal.

His major propositions — Le Smoking (1966), the safari jacket (1968), the peasant blouse (1976), the Mondrian dress (1965), the Ballets Russes collection (1976) — are, individually, the most-copied silhouettes of the late twentieth century.

Withdrawal

Saint Laurent retired in 2002 and delivered, at the Centre Pompidou, one of the most moving farewells in fashion’s history. He died six years later, in Paris, of brain cancer. Pierre Bergé survived him by nine years. Their collection — art, furniture, couture — was auctioned at Christie’s in 2009 for €374 million, at the time the highest total ever realised for a private collection.