yves saint laurent

www.ysl.com

Yves Saint-Laurent

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent (b.1936 in Oran Algeria)

Yves was born into hte family of an insurance-company director Charles Saint-Laurent and his socially prominent spouse, Lucienne Mathieu. The origins of his family roots can ce traced also in North Africa, where they moved at the end of the Franco-Prussian war. Being only 17, in 1957 Yves separated from the rest of his family and in went to work for Christian Dior. In 1957, after Dior's death, he was appointed to manage the entire Dior company and was believed to “redeem“ it (i.e.to save it from being bankrupt). At this time (aged 21) Yves Saint-Laurent in the beginning of the 1960s set up his own fashion salon, financially supported by his boyfriend Pierre Berge; they broke up in 1976 and , rather surprisingly, managed to run their business even more successfully than ever before.

By and by, he recruited to the Frenchmilitary forces to fight in the Algerian war of independence, but after three weeks of constant terrorizing by his peer soldiers(resulting in his nervous collapse) he had to be relocated into a French mental hospital. There he had to undergo the most extreme psychiatric therapy, which consisted also from the electroshock treatment. He was hospitalized there along with Talitha Pol-Getty(who overdosed in 1971), Betty Cartoux(the daughter of a decorator from France) and Catherine Deneuve , the most famous French actress.

During the end of the 1970, London millionairess Diane Boulting-Casserley Vandelli became an agent of Yves' corporation - she is responsible for making it extremely favorite brand in the European elite.

Saint-Laurent vogue house was in 1993 purchased (for circa 600,000,000 USD)by the pharmaceutical firm Sanofi. The corporation was sold again in 1999 by Gucci; the designing of the ready-made clothing collections was in the responsibility of Tom Ford, while that of Saint-Laurent's was to create a new exclusive haute couture. Its popularity grew up as quick as flash and in the documentary titled Paris is Burning, one drag house claimed Saint Laurent as its "family name".

The 1998 is the year of Yves's retirement – he begun to live a solitary life and was to be found mainly at his residence in Marrakech( Morocco).

Because of the rapid deterioration of his health, decades of desolation, depression, critical remarks adressed to the Saint-Lauent items, alcoholism and drug misuse, connected with queries with the chief designer Ford – because all of this in 2002 Saint-Laurent together with Gucci decided to terminate the widely admired YSL fashion house(however, the brand still exists today(e.g. via the boxer briefs) by means of its former associate Gucci. Ford retired in 2004 and the new head of the corporation is presently Stefano Pilati, who is in charge of producing the pret-a-porter line.