Yves Saint Laurent, the French fashion designer who created a bold a new dress code for women during the feminist revolution of the 1970s and helped launch the era of the celebrity designer with his jet-set lifestyle, died Sunday at 71.The designer died at his Paris home following a long illness, Pierre Berge, his longtime friend and business partner, told the Associated Press.
From the start of his career at 21, when he replaced his mentor, Christian Dior, as chief designer of the couture house of Dior in Paris, Saint Laurent crafted a modern look for women that set a new standard.
He was the first to make pants and pantsuits the basic pieces of a woman's wardrobe, doing it in a way that conveyed femininity, self-confidence and style. In contrast for evening, he styled sheer blouses, flounced skirts and a slinky tuxedo worn over bare flesh that he famously named, “le smoking."
“The word 'seduction' has replaced the word 'elegance' in fashion," a French television commentator announced in 1967, about Saint Laurent's impact on the industry.
His gift for redefining French couture was apparent in a single dress he showed in his first collection for Dior, in 1957. A “trapeze" style, it fell in loose folds from the yoke to the hem with no padding, no whalebone construction, no corseting. The easy shape and loose fit was younger, freer than anyone thought of as haute couture, a world dominated by designers in their 70s.
