3 things that Yves Saint Laurent brought to fashion The designer would have turned 89 today

Large glasses on his nose, cigarette in hand, and tie around his neck, Yves Saint Laurent, both the man and the designer, was the embodiment of elegance. At just 21, he inherited the reins of the House of Dior after its founder's sudden death, and he quickly and skillfully learned the ropes. His shapes and colors were soon widely noticed, and his eponymous brand became a great success when he was only 25 years old. Today, Yves Saint Laurent would have celebrated his 89th birthday. To properly pay tribute to him, let’s take a look back at three fundamental elements of contemporary fashion we owe to Yves Saint Laurent.

1. Women’s suits and androgynous fashion

In September 2024 at Paris Fashion Week, Bella Hadid closed the show of the SS23 collection wearing oversized glasses and an equally oversized suit. She followed an army of powerful women, self-assured, confident, strong, each dressed in a three-piece suit once considered reserved for men. It all began with Saint Laurent’s FW66, in which the women’s suit was the central piece. Although initially overlooked by haute couture clients, it quickly won over the ready-to-wear market and sold like hotcakes at the Rive Gauche boutique. The women’s suit would later be reimagined in countless ways by Yves Saint Laurent himself, as well as by Hedi Slimane, Tom Ford, Stefano Pilati, and more recently Anthony Vaccarello.

2. Blending art and fashion

The FW66 couture collection mentioned above is iconic not only for its women’s pantsuits. It is also remembered for the tribute to Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, brought to life through trapeze dresses decorated with the artist’s signature shapes and colors. The Mondrian dresses remain one of the most popular pieces from the House of Saint Laurent. The following year, it was Tom Wesselmann whom Yves Saint Laurent honored in his winter couture collection, decorating black dresses with the artist’s signature women’s faces and bodies. For FW69, Saint Laurent didn’t pay tribute to an artist but collaborated with one—Claude Lalanne—creating a surreal, light, slightly magical collection. For Haute Couture SS88, he returned to tributes, celebrating Cubism, particularly the work of Georges Braque, and for SS01, he honored Pierre Bonnard.

3. Color blocking

These tributes to various artists undoubtedly brought an essential aspect to Saint Laurent’s collections: color. The influence of Cubism, in particular, led Saint Laurent to present his colors in clearly defined, geometric, almost architectural shapes. One of the most iconic collections featuring this color blocking is the SS71 Haute Couture, titled Libération. Inspired by the years of occupation and the 1940s in general, it stood out with its graphic prints and especially its vivid colors. These bright hues also featured in the recent women’s collection FW25 by Anthony Vaccarello for the French house, composed exclusively of fuchsia, orange, green, and blue.