Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent was founded in Paris in 1961 by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. The first collection in 1962 drew international attention, but the house’s lasting significance lies in bringing couture into conversation with urban life and the culture of its time.

Saint Laurent Rive Gauche launched in 1966, giving ready-to-wear the same creative energy as haute couture. Named for Paris’s avant-garde Left Bank, it established ready-to-wear as an independent form of designer expression.

Contrast drives the Saint Laurent style. The controversial Libération collection of 1971 looked to the 1940s and anticipated the strong shoulders of the 1980s. In 1976, the Ballets Russes-inspired collection demonstrated how decorative spectacle could present fashion as art.

Cinema broadened this cultural reach. In 1967, Saint Laurent created Catherine Deneuve’s costumes for Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, bringing couture and ready-to-wear into a wider visual world.

In 1977, the house presented its Chinese collection alongside Opium—the first time, according to its chronology, that a couture collection was conceived around a fragrance. Scent became another carrier of theme, mood and visual imagination.

The house joined Gucci Group in 1999; Yves Saint Laurent retired after a retrospective show in 2002 and couture closed. The name was shortened to Saint Laurent in 2012, recalling the 1966 ready-to-wear identity. Anthony Vaccarello has served as creative director since 2016.

Today, Y, Libre, Black Opium, Mon Paris and L'Homme range from fresh woods and floral spice to coffee, vanilla and romance. Rather than one formula, they share a role within the house: expressing clear, free and contrasting characters where fashion, visual culture and perfume speak one language.