Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent, formerly known as Yves Saint Laurent, is a French fashion house founded by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Berge in 1966. Saint Laurent was fired from the house of Christian Dior at that time and thus decided to launch his own fashion house with colleagues from Dior. With financial support from American millionaire J. Mack Robinson, Saint Laurent debuted his first collection in five months. Saint Laurent’s designs were popular, and signaled many trends of the time, as well as introducing iconic designs. In 1966, Saint Laurent was inspired by androgyny and thus created the iconic Le Smoking suit, a women’s tuxedo that emulated menswear and was controversial at the time, with the Safari Jacket soon to follow. In 1967, Saint Laurent launched a luxury ready-to-wear line and named it Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche. By the 1980s, the fashion house was so popular and coveted that many museums around the world featured Saint Laurent’s work with retrospectives. By the 1990s, Yves Saint Laurent entered the stock market, and was bought by the Elf Sanofi Group in 1993. In 1998, the company was bought by the Francois Pinault group, however, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge retained most of the control over the fashion house while relinquishing control over its perfume and cosmetics lines. In 1998, Saint Laurent stopped designing for the Rive Gauche line, and hired Alber Elbaz and Hedi Slimane to design the women’s and men’s ready-to-wear lines respectively. In 1999, the company was sold to the Gucci Group, who then hired Tom Ford to be its creative director. In 2004, Stefano Pilati replaced Ford, and brought more structure and style to the brand -- a contrast from the opulent chic brought to the label by Ford. In 2012, it was announced that Stefano Pilati was to step down and that previous Yves Saint Laurent Men designer, Hedi Slimane was to take over as creative director. To much controversy, Slimane renamed and rebranded the label as “Saint Laurent Paris,” paying homage to the house’s “Saint Laurent Rive Gauche” name from 1966. Although Slimane’s designs are met with polarizing opinions, he has nearly doubled the house’s revenue since his appointment.