This Story Nails What Made Yves Saint Laurent Such a Legendary Designer

A rare opportunity to learn about the inner workings of designer Yves Saint Laurent.

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Complex Original

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Although there's been two biopics about Yves Saint Laurent released recently, you're going to want to make room for at least one more bit of coverage about the legendary designer. The Cut just published a mesmerizing story about a visit Kate Betts, a former editor at Vogue and editor-in-chief at Harper's Bazaar, made to Saint Laurent's studio. The story is an excerpt from Betts' new memoir, My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine. 

The story recounts everything from Saint Laurent's trouble with drugs and alcohol, his fallout with with Betts' then-boss John Fairchild, the famed editor of Women's Wear Daily, the inspirations behind the designer's collections, and how his childhood shaped him.

Betts paints Saint Laurent as a master storyteller as the designer talks about a dress inspired by the south. "Part of the effectiveness of his storytelling was a certain elusiveness," Betts says. "As you listened, you were free to fill in the story with your own imagination. He may have described the thick white columns fronting the porch, the rocking chair swaying slowly back and forth, and the stillness of the afternoon. Or maybe I imagined all that."

Betts adds that it was this penchant for creating visions that made him so successful. "You could dismiss fashion as some­thing frivolous and ultimately irrelevant, but we all have to wear some­thing, and what we wear says so much about who we are and how we see ourselves," she says. "Saint Laurent understood that... He understood better than anyone that style was not simply about appearance. Style was about gestures, experiences, and taste. Style was about context. Style told a story: It began with a time and a place." 

You can read the whole excerpt over on The Cut and pick up Betts' new book at Amazon now

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