Guide Tour of Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris, France
The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris is a museum dedicated to fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, at 5, avenue Marceau, in the building where the fashion house stood. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris exhibits the couturier’s body of work on the legendary premises of his former haute couture house, alternating between retrospective displays and temporary thematic exhibitions.
The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris will focus on both the couturier’s creative genius and the process of designing a haute couture collection. Beyond its monographic ambitions, the museum seeks to address the history of the twentieth century and the haute couture traditions that accompanied a way of life that no longer exists. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris is the first museum of this scale dedicated to the work of one of the twentieth century’s greatest couturiers to open in the capital of fashion.
This museum, dedicated to one of the most iconic couturiers of the 20th century, is housed in a Second Empire mansion, in which the designer’s teams worked for 30 years. The museum presents dresses, accessories, costume sketches, photos and videos to the public in a 450 m² exhibition space. Highlights include the reception rooms formerly open to clients, more than 5,000 prototype dresses prototypes and the Studio, the nerve centre where all the collections were designed.
The museum located in the same building serves as the headquarters of the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent. The legendary hôtel particulier at 5 avenue Marceau where Yves Saint Laurent spent nearly thirty years designing his collections from 1974 to 2002. Over fifteen years after the haute couture house closed, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris re-open on October 3, 2017.
Set designer Nathalie Crinière and decorator Jacques Grange, both long-time collaborators of the Fondation, have designed the exhibition spaces to recreate the original atmosphere of the haute couture house. Across 450 m2, an ever-changing rotation of retrospective displays and temporary thematic exhibitions will present the Fondation’s rich and unique collection. The intimate museum extends over all floors of the building, The exhibition space is divided into small partitioned spaces. Among these spaces is the workshop where the designer worked, upstairs, restored almost identically.
The exhibition areas redesigned, which the surface is doubled and work to reproduce the house’s atmosphere. The former lounges of the designer house and the designer’s creation studio are integrated in the visit. To immersing visitors in the heart of the creation process of the designer house to fully experience Yves Saint Laurent’s universe. In order to show the richness of his heritage, pieces exhibited will often be renewed, under the responsibility of Aurélie Samule called head of the collections.
Biography
Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent is a great French couturier, one of the most famous in the world, whose haute couture collections are part of the history of the 20th century. Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent was born in Oran where he spent his youth, before arriving in Paris to work at Dior. He is a gifted draftsman and creator; his influence grew in this house, and replaced Christian Dior on the couturier’s sudden death.
Yves Saint Laurent then experienced a triumph at the age of only twenty-one, upon the release of his first collection: “Trapèze”. A few years later, he left the prestigious house on Avenue Montaigne to found the company that bears his name with his companion Pierre Bergé, whom he met for the first time in January 1958, he would not leave until his death.
The first haute couture collection was presented in 1962; it will be followed by the Mondrian dress or the “Pop Art” collection which recall his taste for art, then the tuxedo and the trouser suit inherited from the male wardrobe, the safari jacket which he transforms from a functional garment into an element chic, the thigh-high boots, the transparent blouses that caused so much ink to flow in the press in the midst of a sexual revolution…
In love with exoticism throughout his life, he was the first to hire models for his fashion shows.of Asian or African descent. Modernist and in tune with his time, he created, in parallel with haute couture, his luxury ready-to-wear under the name of rive gauche ; this one will become an example for many other couturiers.
During the following decades, he presented the “Picasso” collection, once again referring to graphic art. During these years the company grows with the success of perfumes, cosmetics or accessories. The couturier was then awarded a fashion Oscar. At the end of the 1990s, tired of designing ready-to-wear, he focused on haute coutur.
Inspired by women, Yves Saint Laurent knows how to create for them during his career and leaves at his death in 2008 a major legacy for fashion as well as many classics. of the female wardrobe.
The museum
Two museums are set up in 2017 to exhibit works by the couturier Yves Saint-Laurent, and to serve his memory, exploiting the fund of the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent foundation, one in Marrakech and the other in Paris.
The Parisian museum is inaugurated at the end September 2017 and opens in October 2017. It is a priori the first time with this Parisian place that a museum is dedicated to a single couturier in France. It receives the Musée de France label, which makes its collections inalienable, and which can facilitate the pre-emption of new pieces in public sales.
In addition to the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, the implementation project notably associated Olivier Flaviano, director of this new museum, Aurélie Samuel, art historian and curator (who comes from the Guimet Museum ), the scenographer Nathalie Mane and the decorator Jacques Grange who decorated the whole in a “Grand Siècle” style.
Permanent collection
The foundation jealously kept 40 years of creations of this true symbol of Parisian Haute Couture. With over 5,000 clothing pieces, 15,000 accessories and several dozens of thousands of drawings, collection boards and other documents, the collection, used to belonging to the foundation, is of an incredible richness.
Since the closure of the fashion house, Yves Saint Laurent’s work studio remains in place in its entirety, few people have access to it: the museum reconstructs it and now makes it accessible. His most emblematic creations are recalled: The tuxedo for women,thesaharienne, the Mondrian dress, the Jumpsuit, etc., creations that have become classics.
The pieces presented are prototypes or one-offs. The first collection, from 1962, is also evoked with some of the pieces from this collection, sketches and photos of its preparation. Some of the designer’s sources of inspiration are highlighted, particularly in the Voyages imaginaires section.
The biographies chart the trajectories of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, from the pair’s personal lives and convictions to Saint Laurent’s signature designs and the history of the haute couture house.
Temporary exhibitions
Thematic temporary exhibitions are also organized, the first being in 2018 L’Asie rêvée by Yves Saint Laurent, which brings together 50 models inspired by India, China and Japan, and from the permanent collection, and compare them with Asian works of art lent by private collectors and by the national museum of Asian arts – Guimet.
External Exhibitions
Carrying on the work begun by the haute couture house in 1983, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris draws on its collection to organize exhibitions devoted to the couturier in museums all over the world.
Guided Tour
During this 1h15 guided tour, discover the work of one of the most iconic couturiers of the 20th century inside his former fashion house. You will begin your visit at the house’s historic entrance, then tour its magnificent rooms, complete with their preserved original decor. The museum displays over 5,000 haute couture pieces, conserved since the founding of the fashion house.
Organization
Faithful to its will to make culture more accessible, the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent wishes to make the Yves Saint Laurent museums temple of fashion both for connoisseurs and beginners. The fund, which began in the 1960s and was brought together during their lifetime by the pair Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, has some 35,000 pieces (designs, textiles, accessories, etc.), including more than 7,000 haute couture creations.