Yves Saint Laurent

by Alice Rawsthorn

An in-depth analysis of the helter-skelter financial and business empire set up by Yves Saint-Laurent's lover Pierre Berge and an insight into the life of a tragic 20th-century genius.

Genres: Fashion, Biography, Biography Memoir, Art, Nonfiction, LGBT

Paperback

First published December 1, 1996

About the author

Alice Rawsthorn is an award-winning design critic and the author of critically acclaimed books on design, including Hello World: Where Design Meets Life, Design as an Attitude and, most recently, Design Emergency: Building a Better Future. She is a co-founder with Paola Antonelli of the Design Emergency project to investigate design's role as a force for positive change. In all her work, Alice champions design's potential to address complex social, political and ecological challenges.

An influential public speaker and social media commentator on design, Alice has participated in important global events including TED and the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Her TED talk has been viewed by over a million people worldwide. One of The Big Issue's 100 Changemakers 2023 for her work on Design Emergency, she was awarded an OBE for services to design and the arts.

Born in Manchester and based in London, Alice graduated in art history from Cambridge University. She was an award-winning journalist for the Financial Times for nearly twenty years, working as a foreign correspondent in Paris and pioneering the FT's coverage of the creative industries. For over a decade, Alice was design critic of the international edition of The New York Times, writing a weekly Design column, which was syndicated to other media worldwide.

An honorary senior fellow of the Royal College of Art with an honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts, Alice is a founding member of the OECD's Future of Democracy Network, of the advisory board of the DemocracyNext research and action institute and of Writers at Liberty, a group of writers who are committed to championing human rights and freedoms as supporters of the human rights charity Liberty.

Alice has served on many cultural juries including: the Turner Prize for contemporary art; the Stirling Prize for architecture; the PEN History Book Prize; the Aga Khan Award for Architecture; the Buckminster Fuller Challenge; the Museum of the Year award; the Rome Prize for Architecture and Design; the Soane Medal for Architecture; and the BAFTA film and television awards.

A former chair of the boards of trustees of The Hepworth Wakefield museum in Yorkshire, Chisenhale Gallery in London and Michael Clark Company, the contemporary dance group, Alice was a longstanding trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery. A trustee of Arts Council England from 2006 to 2013, she is a past chair of the British Council's Design Advisory Group and a former member of the Design Council and of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Design. From 2018 to 2023, Alice was a member of the UK government's Honours Committee for Arts and Media.

As well as contributing essays to a number of books on design and contemporary culture, Alice is the author of an acclaimed biography of the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and Hello World: Where Design Meets Life, described by the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist as "panoramic in scope, passionately argued and highly addictive to read". Design as an Attitude is published globally by JRP|Ringier and Design Emergency: Building a Better Future, co-written with Paola Antonelli, by Phaidon. Alice's books have been translated into over a dozen languages.

Reviews

[Yup · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susigraudinau🥹

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, diverting, entertaining. I pretty much knew it all, but it was a good refresher.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a better read than I was expecting. In particular, the chapters about Pierre Bergé's business dealings were quite interesting, to my surprise. Rawsthorn did an excellent job explaining the conglomeration of the fashion industry. I can't help but think that Rawsthorn wrote this book just a few years too early. I could feel the foreshadowing whenever the dealings of the Gucci group were mentioned in passing, but of course, in real life there really isn't any foreshadowing. I would have liked to read her analysis of a few future events: Albert Elbaz's ill-fated time at YSL, acquisition by the Gucci group (PPR/Kering), Tom Ford's years doing YSL ready-to-wear, YSL's retirement and closure of the couture house in 2002. The Beautiful Fall covered these topics briefly, but they would have been better handled by Rawsthorn, I think, but it's not fair to hold the future she didn't know against her.

[Emmett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interestingly researched, and in complete disregard of its lackluster blurb. With biographies of famous people one is rather familiar with, the fun part is seeing what facts have been put together in each volume. Rawsthorn weaves together her eponymous figure's personal history with the wider world of politics (French and international) and its effects on the fashion industry - the book's title seems refer as much to the brand-name as it does the designer. (Consequently half of the time the book centers on Pierre Bergé doing business. A necessary and illuminating exploration, perhaps, but it at its most concentrated seems so many miles away from Yves doing goodness knows what.) The serious affairs are peppered with details that are intriguing or disarmingly amusing - from Saint Laurent writing prose and poetry (none of which, to this reader's knowledge, has ever been published which is a real shame given Anthony Burgess' praise of a manuscript he stole a glance at - 'the intricacy of the sentence construction, the love of rare words, the hints of a mental complexity not usually associated with a dress designer'), to one of the Moujiks sinking its teeth into the leg of an interviewer from the New Yorker. Still, it is his personality, his problems, quirks, and casually mentioned details like the fact that he watches Visconti's films and the films of other favourite directors on video in his bedroom, that continue to captivate and trouble. As a figure lost in time, Saint Laurent is far from a solved mystery, even after an almost 400-page biography.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book shines in its descriptions of the 1950s through the 1970s with the evolution of the fashion house and the changing times in Paris. However, it loses a lot of steam in the last third. There is a time in Saint Laurent's life where he becomes a recluse— not even his own friends see him often, and so of course, the information on him thins out. However, reading about 100 pages about the French stock exchange is not particularly what I was looking for in a YSL biography. If I read again, I would probably call it off around 1980.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

great and engaging account of one of fashion's most influential names.

[Talulla Barouch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to be ysl