Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech Museum Fuses the Best of French and Moroccan Design

It was first announced at the beginning of last year that legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent would receive two dedicated museums — one of which would be in Marrakech, Morocco, a city whose rich colors and style strongly influenced the visionary’s designs and legacy. We now finally get a look inside the spectacular space, which will officially open to the public on October 19.

Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech is located at the former fashion house of Yves Saint Laurent at 5 Avenue Marceau and is designed by studio kO‘s Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty. The exterior of the structure features a fluid pattern of small, salmon-hued bricks that evoke the “weft and warp of fabric” — on the inside, “velvety, smooth and radiant” motifs mimic the lining of a couture jacket.

The 4,000 square meter space houses a permanent exhibition devoted to Yves Saint Laurent’s life and works, a terrace café, a 150-seat auditorium, a research library with over 6,000 volumes of books, as well as a temporary exhibition space now dedicated to painter Jacques Majorelle.

The late and great French industrialist Pierre Bergé, who co-founded YSL, spoke to the museum’s mission just a month before the opening: “When Yves Saint Laurent first discovered Marrakech in 1966, he was so moved by the city that he immediately decided to buy a house here, and returned regularly. It feels perfectly natural, fifty years later, to build a museum dedicated to his oeuvre, which was so inspired this country.”

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Yves Saint Laurent Museum
Rue Yves St Laurent, Marrakech 40000
Morocco

In case you missed it, take a look inside Keith Richards’s Greenwich Village penthouse.