The first full account of the life and business empire of France’s most enduring and innovative designer by a leading Financial Times journalist who has close contacts in the fashion world.

Little Book of Yves Saint Laurent is the pocket-sized and exquisitely illustrated story of 60 years of innovative fashion design. An enigmatic, daring and astonishingly creative designer, Yves Saint Laurent is credited with the elevation of haute couture to fine art, turning the fashion show into a spectacle of breathtaking proportions, and revolutionizing the gendered norms of womenswear. Describing Saint Laurent’s beginnings in Algeria as a precocious boy making miniature garments from fabric scraps, Little Book of Yves Saint Laurent depicts the designer’s ascent from fashion student to the right-hand of Christian Dior. Going on to found his own fashion house in 1961, Saint Laurent created his famous "le smoking" trouser suit, brought the leather jacket to the mainstream and astounded the fashion world with his blend of elegance and artistic drama. Little Book of Yves Saint Laurent documents the talent of a visionary creative in a perfect gift for any lover of fashion.

Yves Saint Laurent was an artist who worked in the sphere of fashion, and whose entire life was devoted to a quest for perfection. His entire creative output is featured in this book.

Yves Saint Laurent Icons of Fashion Design, acclaimed by the critics as an intoxicating book remains the most attractive homage to the uncrowned king of haute couture. Pictures taken by the world's leading fashion photographers trace the success of Saint Laurent's designs, which, since conquering the fashion world five decades ago, have caused sensation after sensation each year. The book also constitutes a high-quality review of fashion photography over a period of forty years, collecting 135 YSL dresses in images created by fashion photography's greatest 20th century heroes. Yves Saint Laurent was equipped with an infallible instinct for reading the aesthetic signs of the times, and this enabled him to have a profound effect on fashion in the second half of the 20th century.

Originally born in Algeria, Yves Saint Laurent moved to Paris when he was 18, and only three years later he was handpicked by Christian Dior to take the reins as designer of his fashion house. Over time, Saint Laurent resurrected haute couture from the casual mores that predominated in the 1960s, but also offered chic cachet to ready-to-wear clothing. He was among the earliest of designers to incorporate non-European references into his work, and in 1983 he became the first living designer to be feted with a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Vogue on Yves Saint Laurent is a stellar volume in the series from the editors of British Vogue, featuring 20,000 words of original biography and history and studded with more than 80 images from their unique archive of images taken by leading photographers.

On January 21, 1971, couturier Yves Saint Laurent presented his Spring-Summer haute couture collection. Inspired by the garments of the war years, the collection included short dresses, platform shoes, square shoulders, and exaggerated makeup. The show caused an outrage among the public, the critics, and the press alike, earning it the title of Paris s ugliest collection. Nevertheless, the haute couture designs of the runway made their way to the boulevards, giving full sway to the retro trend that quickly conquered the streets. "Yves Saint Laurent: The Scandal Collection, 1971" offers a behind-the-scenes look at the influential collection that drew fire in the fashion world from the collection s inspiration to the press coverage that followed. Beautifully illustrated and documented with well-researched essays, this book is enriched with personal interviews and archival photographs of the show, the models, the designs, and the textile and print samples, as well as sketches and international press clippings."

This illustrated volume presents vibrant photographs of Yves Saint Laurent's most important designs and is highlighted with essays and quotations that honor his legacy.

Three dolls, 28 costumes capture the highlights of St. Laurent's distinguished career: a Mondrian-inspired dress, a satin-trimmed tuxedo, a day dress in the "trapeze" style, and much more.

Yves Saint Laurent is a name synonymous with style, elegance, and high fashion. When he came on the scene at Dior and then started his own line, he quickly changed the way people regarded haute couture and the world of fashion itself. He revolutionized women's evening wear when he introduced Le Smoking, a woman's tuxedo, and made couture accessible to a younger generation.Yves Saint Laurent is Roxanne Lowit's personal photographic history of Saint Laurent, the man and the fashion, from 1978, the year she first met him, to the last show he gave in 2002. With contributions from YSL's muses and admirers, including Catherine Deneuve, Betty Catroux, Lucie de la Falaise, Pat Cleveland, and Valerie Steele, this reduced format hardcover represents the backstage experience at YSL's shows as Lowit saw them herself. Whether surrounded by beautiful models or peeking at the catwalk from the wings, every moment was a magnificent photo opportunity. Lowit shares magical moments of YSL with the world--intimate, social, absorbed in fashion--and creates a unique portrait of this towering figure of postwar couture.

This definitive portrait of the creative genius who transformed fashion is the first major English-language biography of Yves Saint Laurent since his death in 2008, featuring exclusive interviews of those who knew him best, by one of the most respected names in French fashion. Yves Saint Laurent's impact on fashion is legendary, yet he remains an enigmatic and compelling figure. Tracing the development of Saint Laurent's visionary work through his charmed yet tumultuous life, respected fashion writer Laurence Benaïm's newly translated and updated biography of the famed designer explores how this unassuming prodigy became a legendary, celebrated public icon who changed the face of fashion, style, and celebrity. Enriched by the author's exclusive interviews--from Saint Laurent's partner Pierre Bergé to family members, his atelier staff, and muses such as Catherine Deneueve, LouLou de la Falaise, and Paloma Picasso--this fascinating biography chronicles early glimpses of Saint Laurent's talent in Oran and his star trajectory, from leading the House of Dior at the age of twenty-one to his fall from grace and subsequent forging with Pierre Bergé, fashion's most enduring and successful professional partnership. In portraying the man behind the timeless icons of the Mondrian-print shift dress and the Le Smoking trouser suit--who partied with Warhol in New York and relaxed with the jet set in his Marrakesh hideaway--Benaïm powerfully illuminates both the glittering world of haute couture and the business empire that revolutionized the fashion industry.