Translating the Biography of Yves Saint Laurent

My translation of Yves Saint Laurent, the masterful biography by French fashion journalist Laurence Benaïm, is out today from Rizzoli. Translating this book was wonderful, intense, and a long haul. I learned a tremendous lot about Yves’ creative and personal life (and I can’t help but think of him on a first-name basis now that we have spent so much time together). I also have a new appreciation for the art of fashion and his remarkable achievements as a visionary designer.

As Benaïm explains, Yves Saint Laurent was in many ways the last couturier in the grand French tradition of Christian Dior and Chanel. At the same time, he was able to adapt to changes in the modern world — in terms of style, society, and economics — with his ready-to-wear line Rive Gauche. He was a bridge between the classic and the contemporary, a unique designer with an aesthetic that was both romantic and cutting-edge, and always deeply felt.

The cultural changes he lived through — and contributed to through his designs — can be seen in his own changing appearance.

Yves Saint Laurent in 1953, after the 17-year-old prodigy won third place in the wool industry design competition. The next year, he placed both first and third. Image: AP.
Yves circa 1969. Image courtesy Yves Saint Laurent Museum, Paris.

Fashion may seem a trivial subject, but in fact it played a significant role in women’s liberation. This great quote from French Vogue in March 1966 gives a sense of what was at stake in the fashion changes taking place at the time:

“Where are we going? Toward a faster, livelier, bolder woman. We see a lot of her legs, it’s true, but also her arms, and often her back. […] We’re moving toward a kind of fashion that is more based on the body than ever before. For a few years now, we have seen fashion become simplified, freeing itself from details and building itself very rigorously around the body. Not the modified female body, with the cinched waist, the lifted breasts, the swelled hips, but the real female body as it is naked. We don’t ask fashion to amaze us or couturiers to shape us anymore. We ask them to obey us, to help us, to give us our freedom.”

Yves was indeed all about giving women freedom and confidence, whether he was designing le smoking (his tuxedo for women) or his cool, unisex safari jacket. To find out more, read the book!

Top image: Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakesh. Courtesy Yves Saint Laurent Museum, Marrakesh.