Silly Saturday: Yves Saint Laurent on “What’s My Line?”
Watch young charming designer Yves Saint Laurent confound the panel on an early 1960s episode of the game show, “What’s My Line?”
Read Design and Desire’s recent series on Yves Saint Laurent.
Yves Saint Laurent: The “Bad Boy” of Fashion: Part Two
This is second in a two-part series on fashion Twentieth Century fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent. Read Part One.
A Breakdown and a Lasting Relationship
In 1960, designer Yves Saint Laurent was about to enter one of the darkest periods of his life. The designer’s most recent collection had been thoroughly rejected by the French fashion world and then he was drafted into the French military. Unable to cope with army life and the brutal treatment he received there as a homosexual, Saint Laurent suffered a nervous breakdown.1 He spent several months recovering in a French psychiatric hospital. “In 1962, in the wake of his nervous breakdown, Saint Laurent was released from Dior and started his own label, YSL, financed by his companion, Pierre Bergé”2. Bergé handled all of Saint Laurent’s business affairs and attempted to take much of the stress off of his partner. The two would remain together for the next four decades until Saint Laurent’s death.
Designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé. Photo credit: IFC Films.
Source: http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2011/05/04/dd-industry15_PH_0503416819.jpg
Fashion’s “Bad Boy” in the Sixties
In the Sixties while the focus of the fashion world shifted from Paris to London, Saint Laurent remained a dominant force, grabbing attention and further revolutionizing the way women dressed. It was during this period that he introduced his ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo jacket. “Bianca Jagger wore a white Saint Laurent tuxedo open to the waist when she married Mick”1. His collections “also included the sheer blouse and the jumpsuit”4. In 1966, Saint Laurent opened his Rive Gauche ready-to-wear boutiques, becoming the first major designer to do so.2
Yves Saint Laurent, “Le Smoking” jacket, 1966. Photo Copyright Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent.
Source: http://girlsguidetoparis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/meet-monsier-laurent-2.jpg
Yves Saint Laurent: The “Bad Boy” of Fashion: Part One
Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent may have been the last of the great traditional French couturiers1, but he was the first and most influential designer to set fashion for the new liberated women of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Saint Laurent feminized menswear and is “perhaps most famous for [his] ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo jacket”2. His other notable designs include “include the reefer jacket (1962), the sheer blouse (1966), and the jumpsuit (1968)”3. He was also the first couturier to employ models of diverse ethnicity for his runway shows4.
Saint Laurent’s Beginnings
Yves Henri Donat Matthieu Saint Laurent as born in 1936 in Oran, which was then part of French Algeria. Although Saint Laurent’s middle class family was comfortably well-off, young Yves suffered an unhappy childhood. Often bullied and taunted by other boys, he retreated into his own world of “elaborate cut-out paper dolls”1. By age thirteen he was designing dresses for his mother and sister4.
When Saint Laurent was seventeen, his mother took him to Paris and secured him an introduction to “Michel de Brunhoff, editor of French Vogue, who was impressed by Saint Laurent’s sketches”1. In 1954 Saint Laurent won “first prize in the International Wool Secretariat contest for his cocktail dress design”2. Another future fashion superstar, Karl Lagerfeld, placed second in the contest.
Saint Laurent holds up a drawing of his cocktail dress design that won him first prize in 1953 in a fashion drawing competition, sponsored by the International Wool Secratariat, in Paris. Photo credit: Associated Press
Source: http://blog.nj.com/fashiontoday/2008/06/large_YVES999.jpg
The Man Behind “The New Look”: Christian Dior (1905-1957)
Christian Dior, undoubtedly the most influential post-World War II fashion designer, was best known for the hourglass silhouette of his New Look. Dior’s influence, however, extended beyond the couture house; he created a “new business model in the post-war fashion industry by establishing Dior as a global brand across a wide range of products.”1
Christian Dior was born in 1905 in Granville on the Normandy coast. His father, a wealthy manufacturer, moved the family to Paris when Dior was five years old. As a young boy he was always fascinated with art, dreaming one day of becoming an architect.1 Dior’s family had other plans for his future. “At his father’s insistence, he enrolled at the prestigious Ecole des Sciences Politiques.”1
Dior soon abandoned that career path, and in 1928, with funding from his father, he and friend Jacques Bonjean opened an art gallery in Paris. The gallery was short-lived as a few years later tragedy struck the Dior family. Both Dior’s older brother and beloved mother died; the family business went under as so did Dior’s gallery. Dior survived by “selling sketches of hats to Parisians. He drew dresses too, but initially his hats were more in demand”2. In 1938 Dior’s “friend Robert Piquet opened a fashion house”3 and Dior was hired as a designer.
Christian Dior looking on as a model displays an evening dress. Photographer unknown. Source: http://headtotoefashionart.com/wp-content/uploads/Dior-photo-1957-e1292280350413.jpg
During World War II Dior served briefly as an army officer until France’s surrender to Nazi Germany. Shortly afterward designer Lucien Lelong hired Dior to work for his design house. “Dior spent the rest of the War dressing the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators.”1 Although France was in ruins after the War, there existed many business opportunities. Textile manufacturer, Marcel Boussac, known as the “King of Cotton,”1 was eager to begin selling his products again, and “Dior’s description of a luxurious new look with a sumptuous silhouette and billowing skirts had an obvious appeal.”1 Boussac provided Dior with the financial backing for his fashion house which opened in 1946.
Rene Gruau, Illustration of Dior Evening Gown, 1948.
Source: http://headtotoefashionart.com/wp-content/uploads/Dior-by-R-Gruau-1948-e1292793472567.jpg
California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way
“California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way” is on exhibit now through June 3, 2012 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This exhibit features more than 300 items including furniture, ceramics, metalwork, fashion and textiles, as well as industrial and graphic design. It is the first major show to examine the influence of California designers on mid-Twentieth century product design.
Christopher Hawthorne in his review of “California Design” writes:
“California modernism was a distinct style from its earliest years. It traded the social conscience of the Bauhaus for an approach to design that was not only ‘looser, warmer’ and often ‘ad hoc,’ as Kaplan puts it in the catalog, and more expressive of local character, but also entirely comfortable with the notion of salesmanship and the realities of commerce. Indeed, of the exhibition’s four thematic sections, the one on ‘Selling California Modern’ arguably makes up the heart of the show. The other sections are ‘Shaping,’ on the early years of California modernism; ‘Making,’ on materials and fabrication; and ‘Living,’ on housing, furnishings and the indoor-outdoor postwar aesthetic made possible by a benign climate.” Read the entire review.
More information on “California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way” on the LACMA site.
Read our past post on photographer Julius Schulman and California architecture.
Julius Shulman (1910–2009), photographer, Pierre Koenig, architect, Stahl House (Case Study House #22), Los Angeles, 1960 © J. Paul Getty Trust. Used with permission. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library, Getty Research Institute (2004.R.10).
Source: http://www.lacma.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/Exhibition_Main/image/Shulman.jpg
Scarface Style: The World is Yours, So Dress Like It.
To coincide with the September 2011 arrival of the Blu-Ray edition of Brian DePalma’s Scarface (1982), Clothes on Film has posted a tribute to designer Patricia Neal’s costumes. “[The] costumes are one of the most memorable elements, combining period accuracy with flamboyant creativity, especially wild Tony’s island shirts and the glitzy, sometimes stunning dresses worn by his equally volatile moll, Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer).”
Al Pacino as Tony Montana in Scarface (1982) wearing a pin-striped suit influenced by the gangster films of he 1930s.
Source: http://clothesonfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Scarface_Al-Pacino-pinstripe-gun-mid_image-credit-Universal-Pictures-1-494x348.jpg
The American Look
“The American Look: Fashions and Furnishings of the Arts and Crafts Era” features selections from the Sue Genet Costume Collection at Syracuse University and from Dalton’s American Decorative Arts. The show opens at the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, NY on October 15, 2011 and runs through November 11, 2011.
Audrey Hepburn’s Classic “Modern” Style
Actress Audrey Hepburn was one of the great movie trend-setters of the Twentieth Century. Today we’re sharing a post on Miss Hepburn’s unique style from Modernist Today:
“The classic timeless beauty of Audrey Hepburn, coupled with the elegant and modernist styling of her many fabulous costumes, are now being appreciated by a new generation. Many iconic images of Ms. Hepburn have been seen in some new places, introducing her iconic images to legions of new fans.”
Funny Face Audrey Hepburn (1957). Photographer uncredited.
Eve, 2000 A.D.
In keeping with our blog’s looking “back to the future,” here’s an amusing Pathetone Weekly newsreel from the 1930s depicting what designers of the period thought that the well dressed woman of the 2000s would be wearing. Video originally posted by HarmoniousPosh.
Colorfast: Sonia Delaunay
“Color is the skin of the world. Nothing is presented to the sight of the viewer which is not colored.” —Sonia Delaunay
Painter and colorist Sonia Delaunay’s major contributions to Twentieth Century textile design and fashion are featured in a exhibit of over 300 examples of her work now through June 5 at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City. Delaunay’s work introduces viewers to the vibrant “electric” colors of the early Twentieth century and celebrates the era’s technology.
Sonia Delaunay in a dress she designed. Date unknown.
Source: http://obit-mag.com/media/image/delaunay_dress.jpg
Born as Sophie Stern in 1885 in the Ukraine, at age five young Sophie was sent to St. Petersburg to live with her rich uncle who later adopted her and later changed her name to Sonia Terk (1). At age 14 she became interested in painting and drawing. She studied “two years at the university at Karlsruhe” (2), then left for “Paris to become an artist”(2). While in Paris “she entered into a marriage of convenience with” (1) German art critic, Wilhelm Uhde. Uhde was responsible for arranging Sonia’s first solo show in 1908. The following year Sonia fell in love with her neighbor, painter Robert Delaunay. In 1910 she divorced Uhde and married Delaunay (2). “The couple’s son, Charles, was born soon afterwards”(2).
