Yves Saint LaurentAccessories

Foreword — 9Hand — 15

Neo-romantic — 31Staging — 49

Impressions of Africa — 67Gold and corn — 85Real and fake — 101Gold buttons — 125

Hearts — 147Crosses — 169

Hybrid motifs and good luck charms — 197Doves — 213

Butterflies and feathers — 237Gardenias and camellias — 261

Ribbons and bows — 285Shells and coral — 305

Arte Povera — 321Part and whole — 335

From toe... — 343... To head — 350

Wild about accessories — 361

Notes on collections — 370Autumn – Winter Collection 1976Autumn – Winter Collection 1979Autumn – Winter Collection 1988

9

Throughout his career, however, he retained a certain sense of formality, a faint but enduring vestige of a way of life he had known when he started out: he could not conjure up dresses without imagining the requisite jewellery, gloves and hats to accompany them. In contrast to his clothes designs, he produced very few drawings for these accompanying elements, but his vision of these was none the less precise for all that: this was because he saw them as encapsulating the spirit or mood of an outfit. He was naturally dependent in this area on outside associates and suppliers and craftsmen and women who specialised in particular accessories, each of whom had their own techniques, constraints and particular approaches. He gathered to-gether a clutch of close associates in what was known as “the studio” to form what one might call the ornament chain to translate his thinking step by step and turn these wonderful details into reality: heads of workshops and products, craftsmen and women such as the gold-and silversmith Robert Goosens, paruriers such as Roger Scemama and sometimes artists such as Claude Lalanne. Although he was initially loyal to many of the associates he had worked with at Dior (such as Scema-ma and the shoemaker Roger Vivier), he was quick to broaden the range of people he brought in and set about giving his house its own distinctive stamp. A decisive turning point came in 1976 with the arrival of his friend the mercurial Loulou de la Falaise, who quickly became a close associate. Not only was she an inspiration to Saint Laurent, she was the couturier’s partner in thought, able to interpret his ideas. She shared his taste and even, one could say, his wild imagination. Until the house closed in 2002 it was she who briefed the various craftsmen and women and trade members and ensured that the jewellery, hats, shoes, gloves and scarves they produced accurately matched what Saint Laurent envisioned and so met with his approval. It is this prominent yet poorly known feature of Saint Laurent’s work, this continuous thread which runs through the history of a house which helped shape the course of fashion, that the pages which follow seek to illumine.

Yves Saint Laurent preparing his first collection at 11 rue Jean-Goujon, Paris, in December 1961

»Hat on scarf and jet chocker worn with a formal dress, Spring-summer 1962 haute couture collection

»Jet chocker with round crystal and black rhinestone pendant, red cabochon and black drops in pâte de verre (maison Scemama), Spring-summer 1962 haute couture collection

14 15— Foreword

113112 — Real and fake

Gold metal cuffs topped with a green resin cabochon studded with rhinestone or a turquoise resin cabochon (maison Goosens); Spring-Summer 1986 haute couture collection

«White pearl and black rhinestone earrings (maison Scemama), topaz, emerauld and red rhinestone clip-on brooch (maison Scemama) and gloves worn on cocktail dresses in homage to Piet Mondrian, Fall-Winter 1965 haute couture collection, Vogue US, September 1965 (photographs by Irving Penn)

Straw and snakeskin wide-brimmed hat with a bow at the back, gold metal clip-on earrings (maison Goossens), gold metal cuff topped with a turquoise resin cabochon and assorted ring, worn with the dress “Voulez-vous jouer avec moi” (Do you want to play with me), Spring-Summer 1986 haute couture collection

141140 — Hearts

Straw wide-brimmed hat with bow, heart necklace and gloves worn on a formal dress; Spring-summer 1962 haute couture collection. The necklace was not selected by the designer for the catwalk show of the fashion house. It was probably chosen to complement the dress on the occasion of a photoshoot for a magazine.

Sketch of the heart necklace drawn by Yves Saint Laurent for an article by Laurence Benaïm in Vogue France, November 1990

193192 — Hybrid motifs and good luck charms

Sun earrings, brooch and ring (maison Goossens) worn on an evening gown, Fall-Winter 1985 haute couture collection

Half-sun earrings, sun ring in gold metal, both topped with a big crystal stone (maison Goossens), Fall-Winter 1985 haute couture collection

»Original sketch for the wedding dress of the Spring-summer 1988 haute couture collection

»Bird-shaped bracelet in gold metal (maison Goossens) worn on an evening gown, Spring-Summer 1988 haute couture collection

207206 — Doves

215214 — Doves

Earrings (maison Goossens) and bird-shaped brooches (maison Sabbagh) worn on an evening outfit, Spring-Summer 1988 haute couture collection

Four pairs of earrings featuring birds: one in rhinestone on silver metal (maison Goossens), one in light and navy blue rhinestone and one in light blue and turquoise rhinestone (maison Sabbagh), one in blue rhinestone on grey metal and holding a grey pearl (maison Goossens), Spring-Summer 1988 haute couture collection

»Feather hat worn with a dress at the backstage of the Spring-Summer 1985 haute couture catwalk show

»Black and brown foal leather fez with black and red feathers (maison Yves Saint Laurent), Fall-Winter 1992 haute couture collection

»Feather hat worn with a dress at the backstage of the Spring-Summer 1985 haute couture catwalk show

»Black and brown foal leather fez with black and red feathers (maison Yves Saint Laurent), Fall-Winter 1992 haute couture collection

225

265264 — Ribbons and bows

350 — From toe...

395394 — Autumn — Winter 1976 haute couture collection

Autumn — Winter 1976 haute couture collection

On 29 July 1976, the day after Saint Laurent’s autumn-winter show in the recep-tion rooms of the InterContinental Hotel (which was to be the venue for all his subsequent haute couture shows), the New York Times unhesitatingly hailed it “a revolutionary collection, which is going to change the course of the history of fashion throughout the world”. Yves Saint Laurent, by contrast, described it simply as “a painterly collection (...), a very self-indulgent one at that, because what was on show was not so much a set of dresses as all that I like best in painting.” In it he contrived to conjure up a whole gallery of treasured images, included not just paintings such as Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in their apartment, Ingres’ Turkish bath, Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring and “Degas’ dancers in black corsets”, but film too: Visconti’s Middle European Senso and films by Sternberg starring Marlene Dietrich, not least the seminal Scarlet Empress, his fantastical, sensual and extravagant picture of an imaginary Russia. The collection has gone down in history as the “Ballets Russes collection”, but it conjured up a broader vision than this suggests: an imaginary view of the East encompassing everything from Saint Petersburg to Vienna, northern Italy to the Ottoman Empire. Accessories — trapper hats and fur hats, turbans, buckskin boots, broad plaited belts, byzantine-looking jewellery set against black velvet camisoles, quilted gold silk boleros, long coats, baggy dresses made of silk faille or satin, in a whirl of lamés, moirés, brocades and fur — were key: they encapsulated sensual languor, just as surely as the gleaming Oriental pearl hanging from the ear of the Odalisque with slave painted by Ingres back in 1839.

«Knitted hat, canvas and leather musette, boots, worn with a casual outfit, Fall-Winter 1971 haute couture collection

«Headband, book bag in jersey, gloves, worn with a cocktail outfit, Fall-Winter 1967 haute couture collectionand red feathers (maison Yves Saint Laurent), Fall-Winter 1992 haute couture collection

Sketch of an evening outfit accessorised with a shawl tied in the back, stole, chocker, earrings

34 35

Yves Saint Laurent adjusting a head wrap (made by Hamon) backstage at the Autumn/Winter 1968 Haute Couture show, 30 bis rue Spontini, Paris, July 1968.

36-37 Yves Saint Laurent backstage at the Autumn/Winter 1981 Haute Couture show, InterContinental Hotel, Paris, July 1981 (photograph by Bettina Rheims).

— Hand

42 43

Yves Saint Laurent in his apartment with his mother, Lucienne, 3 place Vauban, Paris, 1961.

Talitha Getty in a Saint Laurent Rive Gauche suit, wearing the ‘lips’ necklace created by Claude Lalanne, 1971, Vanity Fair (UK), February 1971.

— Neo-romantic

144 145

Wooden heart-shaped earrings (made by Niagara), worn with a suit, Spring/Summer 1990 Haute Couture collection.

Heart-shaped manchette bracelets of cedar, rosewood or ebony (made by Niagara), Spring/Summer 1990 Haute Couture collection.

— Hearts

Binding Hardback

Format 246 x 189 mm - 9 3/

4 x 7 1/

2 in

Extent 432

Number of images 300 col. and b&w illus.

Word Count 25,000

ISBN 978 0 7148 7471 5

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