YSL Art meets fashion – The overwhelming success of Mondrian’s collection marked the beginning of Yves Saint Laurent’s dialogue, in which he combined Art and Fashion Design. He drew inspiration from a wide range of artistic movements, including Impressionism, Pop Art, Cubism, and others. From that inspiration came numerous masterpieces of Haute couture.
The interior of the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakesh, a jewel of contemporary museum architecture, also surprises with its dramatic exhibition concept, evoking the theatre. LED lighting technology in a walk-in black box emphasizes the colors and textures of the iconic models.
Yves Saint Laurent (1936 – 2008) is one of the most well-known for shaping Fashion from the late 50s to the 90s with his minimally elegant style. But also one who always sought inspiration in Art throughout a career. Yves Saint Laurent focused on the Art of Fashion, through the fascinating, as well as polarizing, relationship! Once, he proudly declared, My weapon is the way I look at my era and the Art of my time.
YSL Art meets fashion – Pop Art AW Haute Couture Collection 1966.
Jean-Claude Sauer’s photo from the exhibition Yves Saint Laurent and Photography expresses the unique relationship the couturier had with this medium and photographers. In Pop Art Collection 1966, Yves Saint Laurent showcased ensembles inspired by contemporary artists. Bright and punchy, the collection reflected Saint Laurent’s desire to make fashion more accessible by blurring the boundaries between high art and mass culture. Red lips and colored hearts were favourite motifs on the vivid wool jersey dresses.
At the Centre Pompidou, installations of Yves Saint Laurent’s creations are exhibited alongside works by modern artists, among them Ethel Adnan. In the next photo, along with the pop art dress from the 1966 collection, there is also a series of her works. This is an obvious example of transferring the idea of both the composition and the color of Saint Laurent’s dress.
Yves Saint Laurent`s designs are a tribute to Tom Wesselmann’s series Great American Nudes (Nu pop).
Yves Saint Laurent was particularly enthusiastic about the provocative painting of the American Tom Wesselmann. He designed two dresses inspired by the Pop Art series Great American Nudes and included them in the Pop Art collection in 1966. Those are a navy blue jersey evening dress and a purple cocktail dress. They have gained the greatest popularity among the clientele and a place in museums.
In the front, Carmen Kass wears an evening dress, and behind her, Elsa wears a cocktail dress, both Yves Saint Laurent models inspired by the paintings of Tom Wesselmann. Haute couture runway, Fall-Winter 1966, photo: Gerard Pataa.
YSL Art meets fashion – Fantasy of Africa and the Parisian Couture scene.
Fascinated by art forms, vibrant prints, and sculptural hairstyles, Yves Saint Laurent brought African influences to high fashion. At the time, the Bambara collection of 1967 could bear the title When the fantasy of Africa meets the Parisian fashion scene. Here, the encounter means dress designs that combine Parisian formal style with African inspirations. The most noticeable was a tribute to the Malian Bambara sculptures, depicting women with elongated bodies and pointy breasts.
This colorful collection of light dresses attracts attention with its intriguing transparent design of combinations of beads. On the short evening dresses, a tribute to Bambara art, also highlights eccentric materials such as gold thread, iron, raffia, and straw, a link to traditional African techniques.
The basic materials are black cotton and silk. Thus, on that basis, the designer chose to sew different types of pearls: brown wood ones and red, black, and white glass ones.
He also chose to include handmade embroideries between lines of pearls to create a subtle contrast. And the brown cowrie shell, decorative and symbolic (often used in divinatory acts and valued as money. Hanging stones of different colors, as a symbol of former wealth, due to its natural resources.
Bambara, the iconic YSL design, is an object in the museum as well as in art photography.
On the design we see below, black and gold beads are latticed over a bare midriff. Above and below the bareness are mosaics of brown and gold on silk organza. While above and below the belly are denser decorative structures made of silk yarn. So with exoticism, YSL celebrated the beauty of ethnic clothing. And in high fashion, he turned this manner into luxury and chic. An example is this iconic YSL design, which is part of the Museum’s exhibition, and an iconic scene in art photography.
Twiggy (Lesley Hornby) posing in the same model, 1967. Photo by Bert Stern, Vogue, 1967.
After a decade of revolutionary approaches to dressing modern women, at the end of the 70s and 80s, Saint Laurent returned to the most important modernists for inspiration. He began with Picasso, 1979, then Matisse and Léger in 1981.
YSL Art meets fashion – Picasso and Diaghilev tribute Collection
In 1979, the creator fell strongly inspired by the extremely progressive collaboration between Pablo Picasso and Sergei Diaghilev. He was an influential impresario in the Ballets Russes (1909-1929). YSL saw the exhibition of costume mock-ups. After that, he created a fashion collection “Homage to Picasso and Diaghilev”, with milder features of Picasso’s Cubism.
This, Yves Saint Laurent`s Picasso-inspired period, is among the most explicit of reinterpretations in art history. On July 25th, 1979, Saint Laurent presented his Haute Couture collection for Fall/Winter 1979-80 at the Ritz hotel in Paris. He offered the Collection as an homage to Serge Diaghilev and his collaboration with Picasso, which culminated in a standing ovation from the audience.
Nusch Eluard by Picasso, jackets by Elsa Schiaparelli and YSL.
At the Musée Picasso exhibition on Yves Saint Laurent, there is a portrait of Nusch Eluard, and next to it, a jacket by Yves Saint Laurent, 1979. (Left) Portrait of Nusch Eluard by Picasso, 1937; and (right) Jacket, by Yves Saint Laurent, 1979. In Picasso’s 1937 portrait of her, Nusch is wearing a jacket designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. Here, we can see the lapel pins in the shape of cherubs, designed by Jean Schlumberger, 1937. So, Yves Saint Laurent’s jacquard and Picasso’s portrait are on display.
However, that excludes the evidence seen this year (2025), at the Hot Pink Flashes exhibition, about designer Elsa Schiaparelli, at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris (pictured next). In this case, along with the Schiaparelli jacket, lapel pins with cherubs are on display. This fitting jewelry for Elsa Schiaparelli’s creation was made by Parisian jeweler Jean Schlumberger in 1937. So, the rounded story would be that Nush Eluard wore decorative pins, and that’s how she posed for Picasso. That`s the reason for exhibiting jewelry on that occasion.
YSL Art meets fashion – A fashionable Harlequin
Saint Laurent’s black/white dress also reflects Picasso’s cubism in the “Homage to Picasso and Diaghilev” collection. The silk dress directly evokes the aesthetic of the harlequin costume from the 1917 painting “Harlequin and Woman with a Necklace”. Here, the extravagance of contrast does not detract from the elegant dress. It is actually an expression of Saint Laurent’s passion for Picasso’s painting.
YSL dialogue between fashion and art – 1981, Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger.
Thanks to Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger, in 1981, Yves Saint Laurent converted the runway into a gallery where Henri Matisse’s joyful Fauvism met Fernand Léger’s disciplined Cubism. If Matisse painted freely, like a dancer, and Léger constructed precisely, Saint Laurent allowed both principles related to a woman’s body.
The National Museum of Modern Art of France (Centre Pompidou) presented one of the most expressive dialogue cases by Yves Saint Laurent. It is an installation consisting of Henri Matisse`s painting (Romanian Blouse, oil on canvas, 1940) and a festive clothing ensemble. The blouse is of wool crepe, embroidered with sequins, rocailles, and chenille. Matches a dark velvet skirt and belt, from Autumn-Winter Collection 1981.
Here is a painting by Henri Matisse called La Blouse Roumaine (Romanian Blouse), 1940. Matisse painted the blouse’s decorative embroidery as the painting’s real subject by simplifying the pattern and accentuating the sleeves. But Saint Laurent used this painting as a model for transforming an ethnic blouse into an elegant and refined top.
From Léger came Cubist discipline, most vividly an evening gown, Homage to Fernand Léger (1981). It is of the same tones as Léger’s cubist painting Polychrome Flower (1936) and the sculpture (1952), exhibited next to it. Like the painting, the gown forms in bold panels of red, cobalt, yellow, and black, cut into interlocking geometric pieces.
Saint Laurent once again faced the challenge of Cubism.
Cubist artists, moving away from realism, embraced conceptual designs. They liked to experiment with bold ideas, which Surrealism abounded in. In this way, they devised a new way of presenting the world, which Saint Laurent was otherwise delighted with. Drawing on these ideas, in 1988, he created a series of formal robes and jackets. The luxury of a collection based on the motifs of musical instruments and birds is in the application of various artistic embroidery techniques. The motifs of birds are masterfully executed, free outlines with wings in flight, following Georges Braque’s artistry.
YSL Art meets fashion – with sculptural dresses on music, and birds.
Yves Saint Laurent drew inspiration for the spring/summer 1988 ready-to-wear collection from Braque’s signature cubist brushstrokes and his fascination with birds. In a series of over a hundred models, YSL deconstructs shapes and designs 3D creations. Combining the concepts of sculpturality, he played quite a bit. And, he created eccentric evening dresses with Picasso’s instruments, while the women wear Braque’s birds. And the wedding dress (prototype) in the same collection, on the birds, is a more refined design. The dress is made of cotton tulle, while the birds are a tribute to Georges Braque, and make this creation extravagant and poetic.
With Sunflower and Iris jackets, Homage to Vincent van Gogh, YSL once again expressed its passion for art.
Among the expensive, embroidered clothes, from the same collection (1988), two masterpieces have gained cult fame. Homage to Vincent van Gogh was pure emotion – translated into thread. Drawing from Sunflowers and Irises, Saint Laurent, with the master embroiderers at Maison Lesage, created fabric like a garden, blossoming straight from Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionist canvases.
Van Gogh’s style was about feeling, making the world pulse through thick, swirling brushstrokes. Saint Laurent mirrored this through embroidery, layering sequins, beads, pearls, and ribbons like strokes of paint.
Sunflowers evening jacket, based on Van Gogh’s painting “Vase with fifteen sunflowers,” 1888. represents the pinnacle of Saint Laurent and Lesage’s vision and craftsmanship. YSL has created so many flowers, shades, and details, and the haute couture embroiderers spent almost 700 hours stitching the jacket by hand.
The bright yellow and orange one, with sunflowers, of yellow organza, lined with satin and yellow silk. This richly embroidered jacket is fully covered with hand-stitched glass beads, sequins, ribbons, and pearls. Made of over 350,000 sequins, 100,000 ceramic trumpet beads, and individually painted fabric petals, it reportedly weighs over 18kg.
YSL Art meets fashion – Pierre Bonnard and impressionist print dresses.
Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947), co-founder of the post-impressionist group Le Nabi, was influential in the transition to modernism. He painted landscapes, urban scenes, and intimate domestic scenes, whereby the backgrounds, colors, and style usually took precedence over the subject. And Saint Laurent, in his late phase, loved Bonnard`s bright, vivid, colorful paintings. So, Saint Laurent chose the backgrounds of the paintings and made replicas as patterns for the prints of his materials (the printed silk organza, for the Spring/Summer 2001. Collection, the YSL brand, was flooded with cheerful, gentle, colorful dresses drawn from the canvases of Pierre Bonnard.
YSL Art meets fashion – Satin dresses harmonize with the bright colors of Raoul Diffie’s mural.
It is an installation at the Modern Art Museum in Paris. Dresses by Yves Saint Laurent, set with the mural The Power of Electricity by the painter Raoul Diffie, on the occasion of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937. In fact, the three Saint Laurent satin dresses from 1992 have no direct connection to Diffie’s huge mural. But the designer could start with its bright colors, for his satin dresses. Be that as it may, here is a striking installation for the Jubilee.
Stylized, elegant YSL dresses honouring Victor Vasareli’s pop art.
In this installation at the Center Pompidou, YSL dresses seem balanced with the geometric abstractions of Victor Vasarely (1908-1997). The dresses are long or medium length. Predominantly darker color hues from geometric patterned fabrics. Characterized by the stylized elegance of pure Pop Art.
2022. – Six major Parisian museums celebrated the 60th anniversary of YSL’s first fashion show.
In 2022, the Parisian cultural scene paid a great tribute to the celebrated creator. The comprehensive project, commonly titled Yves Saint Laurent in the Museums, presented a series of thematic installations at six leading Parisian museums. Those are: Centre Pompidou, Museum of Modern Art Paris, Louvre Museum, Musée d’Orsay, Musée National Picasso-Paris, and Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Thematically linked exhibitions, from different angles, highlight the artistic and cultural significance of Saint Laurent’s work; his fascination with art, his creative enthusiasm, and the studious precision of the creative process.
The simultaneous realization of commemorative installations in these museums coincides with the 60th Anniversary of the first haute couture show of the YSL brand (January 29, 1962 – January 29, 2022). The linked concepts of settings from different angles highlight the artistic and cultural significance of Saint Laurent’s work; his fascination with art, his creative enthusiasm, and even his obsessive precision in the processes of performance. With the first collection of his brand, in 1962, Yves Saint Laurent established a vision and style that would define his career until his retirement in 2002. During four decades of fashion transformations, he responded to cultural and social conditions with his creations. But he emphasized his love for art, which has always been his inspiration.
In the end, I would conclude:
Finally, no matter which artist or artwork transformed, for sure, Saint Laurent was the fashion designer who not only integrated Art’s concepts into his Fashion designs, but also pointed out the importance of modern art not only for Fashion, but also for Art itself. The career of Yves Saint Laurent showed that there is no separation of fashion from art, and strengthened the creative bridges between them.
Until next reading, I’m staying, Yours sincerely,
Branka on Textiles
