Peter Knapp/Elle September 1965. Haute couture autumn/winter 1965
Evening dress worn by Violeta Sanchez, haute couture autumn/winter 1982. Yves saint Laurent.
Yves Saint Laurent was the world’s most famous fashion designer from the age of 21 until his passing away in 2008. His fame did not solely rest on his great talent and his eye. YSL had a secret weapon: photography. It played a crucial part in the mystic and in YSL’s dominance. The fashion designer knew how to use it to promote his brand, of course, but also to further his legend. Some images have remained in the consciousness of everyone, even those who are not fashion aficionados: the juvenile face of a 21 year old Saint Laurent shot by Irving Penn in 1957, as he became the head of the Dior studio upon the the death of Christian Dior. Jeanloup Sieff’s image of a young YSL posing naked. Helmut Newton’s legendary 1975 photo of a nonchalant woman - the model Vikebe - posing in a tuxedo at night rue Aubriot, in Paris, which became the cover of French Vogue.
Most - not to say all - great photographers of the 20th and 21st Century captured the couturier: Avedon, Irving Penn, Annie Leibovitz, David Bailey, Dominique Isserman, Helmut Newton, Cecil Beaton, Paolo Roversi, William Klein, Juergen Teller, Robert Doisneau, Horst - an encyclopedia of the past half century’s biggest names.
Of course, photography was mostly used to show models and celebrities wearing Yves Saint Laurent: Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Veruschka. In 2020, David Bailey explained to a journalist that when a woman was wearing Saint Laurent, she felt beautiful: “A woman who is proud and free in the way she moves is the starting point of a successful image.”
Jeanloup Sieff, Zizi Jeanmaire for her show “Zizi je t’aime”. 1972
The exhibition in Arles called Yves Saint Laurent and Photography, shows 80 prints chronologically tracing the evolution of the designer, from Irving Penn’s 1957 portrait, to 1962 experimental images by William Klein, to Bettina Rheims’s backstage images of the 1980s.
The second part of the exhibition is designed as a curiosity cabinet featuring 200 objects from the archives of the musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris - contact sheets, campaign catalogues, magazines, personal photos. These documents reveal the central role photography occupied in the life of the fashion designer. To coincide with the Rencontres d’Arles exhibition, Phaidon has published a beautiful book reproducing the works of all the legendary photographers as well as texts highlighting and putting into focus the relationship between YSL and the medium.
~Jean-Sébastien Stehli
Yves Saint Laurent & Photography. La Mécanique Générale. Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles. Until October 5
And: Yves Saint Laurent & Photography (Phaidon publishers). 160p. 59.95€
