He drank vodka from the glasses with double-headed eagle… And then the greater collection appeared – the most famous one by Maestro. Yves read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev, Pushkin… He admired Mussorgsky. There was also Russian Sauna – The Banya. In the territory of the Proust Castle owned by Pierre Berge and Yves Saint Laurent, the real Russian Izba was built. By the way, the poet’s portrait was placed in Saint Laurent house, nearly at his working table. After his resignation from Dior company, while opening his own house one of the patrons of Saint Laurent was Tatiana Yacovleff du Plessix-Liberman – the wife of Conde Nast Publishing editorial director and the swan’s last song of Vladimir Mayakovski. Later, Russia would become the brightest leitmotiv of Couturier’s life and art. He was addicted to challenge, to outrageous non-conformist decisions. Supposed, even this idea belongs to young Maestro – famous photo shooting with the Dior mannequins pictured in Moscow streets, near the sparkling-water machines, at the children’s playgrounds, in the market while buying the lily of the valley bunches from the babushkas. There was one more country in Saint Laurent’s life, the country that caused the special trembling – mysterious, oriental, Tatar-Mongol. Later his personal house in Morocco became his art asylum – the well-known Villa Majorelle where 10 years ago the ashes of Maestro were dispelled. In his young age being the Art Director of the “Christian Dior”, he went for a few-month trip to Oran, to his parents’ house from where he came back with a huge bunch of sketches. Yves Saint Laurent have never sketched in France. His creative interest was mostly lying beyond the European boarders and his brightest collections were dedicated to the faraway countries and unknown cities – the African collection of 1967, the Indian collections in 1980s, the Chinese collection of 1977… Yves Saint Laurent tried to experiment with national clothes – styled Sari, Kimono, Caftan… Adapted headwear – turban, skullcap, Asian hat… If he appealed to Europe – it was something like Andalusia Spain with its fluffy skirts, frills, flounces, flowers. The turbans, belly dresses, oriental styled gowns often appeared in his collections. The milieu he was raised in, the nonchalant colony atmosphere, that was reigning in French North Africa, the particularities of local architecture – all they influenced his art vision. ![]() Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent was born and lived until he was 18 years old in Oran – the harbor city in Mediterranean Algeria. By no doubt there are genes, but also the surrounding medium spirit and it often wins. We are keeping the cultural code of the countries we have grown in. And during all his creative life he was coming back to the territories he came from. The colour affair has its roots, Saint Laurent was born under the burning North African sun, he was grown up in culture sophisticatedly called Al Magrib. Mostly curious that till the 1976 Yves Saint Laurent didn’t paint in colour and that the triumph of this creative thought goes to the same period. The state national designer, he nearly killed the main precept of French elegance – not over three colours in one look. Yves Saint Laurent was one of the first who started dyeing the fur – and soon the women dressed in fuchsia and turquoise fur-coats goes to the catwalk and further to the city streets. Raspberry and emerald combinations, flaming red spilled onto the black or inky, fresh lemon shades interlaced with tints of blue – sky, cobalt in neighborhood with blossom pink, shadowed orange and deep violet… Add to the mentioned the plenty of accessories, all-kind decorations, false massive jewelry, the plumage, tinsels and sequins. The creative works by Saint Laurent himself oppositely differed by the splash of colours. The modern image of the Fashion House is totally changed – the collections under the Saint Laurent name appeal to something gothic, rock-n-roll, youthful, in times androgynous, dominating black, occasionally mixed with white. The triumph of colour in all its variety, in all its possible and impossible combinations. Not the A-line dress and not even the Mondrian dress. And when speaking of Saint Laurent… This will be neither female smoking jacket dressed on a naked body, nor safari-dress, neither the black-laced back, showing the total absence of underwear, nor the transparent blouse, showing absolutely the same. While talking about Chanel we imagine “little black dress”, Dior is undoubtedly associated with the kilometers of fabric rushing from the tiny waist to the New Look silhouette, Balenciaga means the volume jacket, Paco Rabanne bells the metal. Some creation or invention which let them to get the immortality, to stay at the top of the fashion Olympus. ![]() All great haute couture designers have the typical signs.
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