Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent was an artist who worked in the sphere of fashion, and whose entire life was devoted to a quest for perfection. His entire creative output is featured in this book.

This illustrated volume presents vibrant photographs of Yves Saint Laurent's most important designs and is highlighted with essays and quotations that honor his legacy.

The first full account of the life and business empire of France’s most enduring and innovative designer by a leading Financial Times journalist who has close contacts in the fashion world.

Little Book of Yves Saint Laurent is the pocket-sized and exquisitely illustrated story of 60 years of innovative fashion design. An enigmatic, daring and astonishingly creative designer, Yves Saint Laurent is credited with the elevation of haute couture to fine art, turning the fashion show into a spectacle of breathtaking proportions, and revolutionizing the gendered norms of womenswear. Describing Saint Laurent’s beginnings in Algeria as a precocious boy making miniature garments from fabric scraps, Little Book of Yves Saint Laurent depicts the designer’s ascent from fashion student to the right-hand of Christian Dior. Going on to found his own fashion house in 1961, Saint Laurent created his famous "le smoking" trouser suit, brought the leather jacket to the mainstream and astounded the fashion world with his blend of elegance and artistic drama. Little Book of Yves Saint Laurent documents the talent of a visionary creative in a perfect gift for any lover of fashion.

"Retrospective exhibition of twenty-five years of ... [Yves Saint Laurent's] work ... This book, published in connection with the exhibition, features over two hundred of Saint Laurent's couture designs, more than seventy in full color ... Also included is a fully illustrated survey of Saint Laurent's work photographed in black and white by Pierre Boulat and Nicholas Vreeland, supplemented by historically important photographs published in the fashion magazines of the era taken by such renowned photographers as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Bert Stern, Neal Barr, and Bill King"--Cover.

Yves Saint Laurent Icons of Fashion Design, acclaimed by the critics as an intoxicating book remains the most attractive homage to the uncrowned king of haute couture. Pictures taken by the world's leading fashion photographers trace the success of Saint Laurent's designs, which, since conquering the fashion world five decades ago, have caused sensation after sensation each year. The book also constitutes a high-quality review of fashion photography over a period of forty years, collecting 135 YSL dresses in images created by fashion photography's greatest 20th century heroes. Yves Saint Laurent was equipped with an infallible instinct for reading the aesthetic signs of the times, and this enabled him to have a profound effect on fashion in the second half of the 20th century.

On January 21, 1971, couturier Yves Saint Laurent presented his Spring-Summer haute couture collection. Inspired by the garments of the war years, the collection included short dresses, platform shoes, square shoulders, and exaggerated makeup. The show caused an outrage among the public, the critics, and the press alike, earning it the title of Paris s ugliest collection. Nevertheless, the haute couture designs of the runway made their way to the boulevards, giving full sway to the retro trend that quickly conquered the streets. "Yves Saint Laurent: The Scandal Collection, 1971" offers a behind-the-scenes look at the influential collection that drew fire in the fashion world from the collection s inspiration to the press coverage that followed. Beautifully illustrated and documented with well-researched essays, this book is enriched with personal interviews and archival photographs of the show, the models, the designs, and the textile and print samples, as well as sketches and international press clippings."

A unique colouring book of previously unpublished Yves Saint Laurent sketches.