The Met Costume Institute Gala Is Tonight!
After its debut in Montreal, Yves Saint Laurent, a forty-year retrospective exhibit of the fashion designer's career, has made its way onto American soil in an exclusive United States presentation at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, California. Appropriately placed in the city that recalls the revolution of the 1960's, the exhibit follows the long career of this revolutionary women's fashion designer, reminding us that women didn't always wear pants or suits. In his forty year career, Yves Saint Laurent revolutionized women's fashion, liberating women from the confines of conventional femininity by blurring gender roles with empowered silhouettes like his 1966 classic tuxedo suit for women, the Le Smoking suit. As the first French haute couturier to come out with a full ready-to-wear line, YSL also made modern women's wear both fashionable and accessible to women. With clothes on loan from the Foundation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit showcases over 120 fully accessorized outfits along with original sketches and runway show video footage. Read on for more on the exhibit, and click on the slideshow for a glimpse of images and outfits from Yves Saint Laurent as well as a few original sketches featured in the exhibit. Yves Saint Laurent is currently at San Francisco's de Young Museum until April 5, 2009.
