Famed couturier Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) is celebrated in a sumptuous volume of photographs drawn from an exhibition at the Arles Photography Festival 2025 and the holdings of the Mus\u00e9e Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Photos include portraits of Saint Laurent; shots of couture, ready-to-wear fashion, and runway shows; Polaroids, personal photographs (even one of the designer as a baby), and contact sheets. Commentary by art historians, curatorial specialists, and museum staff testify to Saint Laurent\u2019s intimate relationship with photography. \u201cMy greatest asset,\u201d he once remarked, \u201chas been the eye I have for the time I live in and for the art of my time.\u201d As Christoph Wiesner, director of the Arles Photography Festival, observes, for Saint Laurent, \u201cworking with photographers was a means of exploring his own limits, of giving his clothes another life beyond the purely material one.\u201d Saint Laurent had been assistant to Christian Dior at the time of Dior\u2019s sudden death in 1957; immediately, he was thrust into the public eye, with critics and fashion doyennes alike anticipating his creations. From his first show, in 1961, his evolution as a designer was documented by photographers who included some of the most famous names in the field: Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, William Klein, Lord Snowdon, Horst P. Horst, Inge Morath, Cecil Beaton, and Annie Liebovitz, all represented here. His models, too, were renowned: Audrey Hepburn, Twiggy Lawson, Jean Shrimpton, Paloma Picasso, Catherine Deneuve, among many others. He was much photographed himself, with portraits revealing a well-curated \u201ccool masculinity\u201d as well as changes in dress, hair style, and affect\u2014most notably in 1971, for the launch of his men\u2019s fragrance, when he posed nude, his long hair tousled, wearing nothing but his signature black glasses.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Famed couturier Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) is celebrated in a sumptuous volume of photographs drawn from an exhibition at the Arles Photography Festival 2025 and the holdings of the Mus\u00e9e Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Photos include portraits of Saint Laurent; shots of couture, ready-to-wear fashion, and runway shows; Polaroids, personal photographs (even one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}