No one could have known that the retrospective exhibition of Yves Saint Laurent’s fashion designs at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal would take on a elegiac subtext in early June, when the renowned couturier died at his apartment in Paris, aged 71. But so it is that as admirers of Saint Laurent everywhere reflect on the contributions, and even revolutions, he made to the world of fashion, the museum plays host to an elegant mounting of designs spanning 40 (mostly) glorious years at the house of Yves Saint Laurent.
In that time the house produced some 5,000 ensembles and 15,000 objects; only a modest 145 pieces are presented here, organized into five thematic rooms. But we see all the hits—at least, quite a few: the silk crêpe camouflage evening dress of 1971, the suede tunic and thigh-high boots of 1963, the wool peacoat of 1962, and many other precedent-setting looks.
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Yves Saint Laurent Evening Dress Spring-Summer 1971 Courtesy Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent / photo Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent |
It’s a cliché that clothes make the man, but evidently Saint Laurent understood this better than most, deciding, in what became recognized as perhaps his greatest achievement, to apply the vocabulary of men’s dress to women’s. Appropriately, jackets and pants are exhibited in the first room. In this setting, it seems abundantly clear that clothes are indeed about power.
And yet Saint Laurent was also a firm believer that it was the woman under the clothes who mattered. In a video recording, he intones in a gentle timbre that “the best clothing around a woman are the arms of the man she loves, but for all women not so lucky, I am there.” Sentimental, perhaps, but the words seemed to embody the mood in the gallery. Despite the highlights on innovation, it’s deeply of genuine romance, of being in the presence of an acutely sensitive personality. A knee-length velvet patchwork coat in blues and pinks is decorated with the words “love me forever.” A striking cocktail dress seems almost weightless, made from a white and black polka-dot gazar, its pattern becoming finer towards the neckline. A wedding dress from 1999 might seem to belong to the overtly whimsical side of fashion—it consists of two well-positioned wreaths of fabric flowers—but even this seems sincere.
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Yves Saint Laurent Wedding Dress Spring-Summer 1999 Courtesy Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent / photo Alexandre Guirkinger |
The wedding dress is featured amid many of the most spectacular in the show. A television monitor plays collected clips of fashion shows above a bridge inviting viewers to walk past two rows of ensembles inspired by flora, fauna and the Victorian and Renaissance past. Nostalgia might rise up when hearing the pop tunes that background the models strutting down the catwalk, wearing many of the pieces here. The experience brings home why this exhibition feels as enjoyable and emotional as it does: as removed from life as haute-couture might sometimes seem today, clothing is art made for the body, and Saint Laurent’s art deftly evokes a visceral response. (1380 rue Sherbrooke O, Montreal QC)
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Yves Saint Laurent Cocktail Dress Spring-Summer 1992 Courtesy Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent / photo Alexandre Guirkinger |
