French fashion designer (1936-2008)
No more rules, the freedom of dressing. The beauty of mixing vintage clothes with a pair of jeans that I love.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
interview, Dazed & Confused, March 2000
Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
New Woman Magazine, 1991
Fashions fade, style is eternal.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Reader's Digest, volume 118, 1980
Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society's struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
I want to thank all the women who have worn my clothes, the famous and the unknown, who have been so faithful to me and given me so much joy.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
"18 Of The Best Yves Saint Laurent Quotes", Stylishlyme
I like to watch the way a model moves in my clothes, the way she gives them life, or if they are wrong, stillborn, the way her life rejects them.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
Fashions pass quickly, and nothing is more pathetic than those puppets of fashion outrageously made up one day, pale the next, pleated or ironed stiff, libertine or ascetic. Playing with fashion is an art. The first rule is don't burn your wings.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
I always believed that style was more important than fashion. They are rare, those who imposed their style while fashion makers are so numerous.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
"Some fashion wisdom from Yves Saint Laurent", USA Today, June 1, 2008
I cannot pretend to do sculpture and make a woman the ridiculous pedestal of my pretensions. To render clothing poetic, yes--but one must preserve its dignity as clothing.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
There are women who have completely transformed my view of fashion and if I hadn't shown them I would never have arrived at this point in fashion, you see.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Interview Magazine
I don't like [to] make a woman ... an abstract concept of the fashion. I don't like [to] say, "You must wear that." ... I am not a dictator.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
"The Turbulent Love Story Behind Yves Saint Laurent's Revolutionary Rise", NPR, June 24, 2014
We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Ritz, no. 85
Dressing is a way of life. It brings you joy. It can give you freedom and liberation, help you to find yourself and to move without restraint. Isn't elegance forgetting what one is wearing?
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
I pass for a hypersensitive, reclusive neurotic, which I may well be, but I hope the year won't come when my anxieties and fatigue will destroy my love of this life, of all the things that inspire me--a line of music, a face in a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
The street and me is a love story. 1971 is a great date because, finally, fashion took to the street.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
"Some fashion wisdom from Yves Saint Laurent", USA Today, June 1, 2008
Anyone who reaches for great expression has to be careful of the ridiculous.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic, by fashion.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Ritz, no. 85
The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
attributed, High-heeled Wonder
I don't really like knees.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
The Observer, August 3, 1958
After so many years of exploring, my art still fascinates me. I know of no greater exaltation. You think there is no going further, that everything is forever fixed and finished--and then, suddenly, depths and vistas reveal themselves that you thought out of reath and that your wealth of experience now fully opens to you. So many times did I believe myself impotent, broken, and desperate before the black curtain of weariness--and so many times did this curtain then rip itself apart to allow glimpses of limitless horizons, enabling me to feel my greatest joys, and, I dare to say, moments of true pride.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983