Yesterday, the Èglise St-Roch on the chic rue St-Honoré became the church of Yves Saint Laurent as the late designer's family, friends, and admirers made their final pilgrimage to the master -- this one to say goodbye to him. Saint Laurent fabulously reinvented the way women dressed for a modern world. He created women's pants for day and night and made men's tuxedo jackets, called "le smoking" in France, a sizzling female statement. He put women in pea coats, trench coats, and leopard prints, and he designed beautiful evening clothes that made women feel they themselves were his divine creations. Many say he was the genius of his generation and chi-chi women like Catherine Deneuve, Lauren Bacall, and Paloma Picasso -- the most stylish women around the world -- wore his sophisticated couture dreams.
A French flag drapes the coffin of Yves Saint Laurent
I was one of hundreds of people -- women and men -- who stood behind barricades under the gray Parisian sky to pay homage to couturier Saint Laurent and to be a part of the star-studded historic passage. Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, Bernadette Chirac, Catherine Deneuve, Claudia Schiffer, Christian LaCroix, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Sonia Rykiel, Vivienne Westwood, and other celebrities from the arts, business, and fashion worlds joined Saint Laurent's former lover and longtime business partner, Pierre Berge, to pay their respects.
Saint Laurent lived a fascinating, full, and wild life. To get a rich sense of Monsieur Saint Laurent, read The Beautiful Fall by Alicia Drake. It's a book you don't want to end -- informative and juicy -- that tells the simultaneous stories of fashion giants Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. Besides being extremely well reported and well written, the book was a scandal in France. Lagerfeld sued to stop its sale.
May YSL rest in glorious beautiful peace.
Eglise St-Roch, though today it's the Church of YSL
In the crowd, Bernadette Chirac (lower left) and Nicolas Sarkozy (front row center)
Sarkozy
Jean Paul Gaultier
YSL
Bernadette Chirac
Catherine Deneuve
Claudia Schiffer
All photos by Beth Arnold. Beth Arnold lives and writes in Paris. To see more of her work, check out www.betharnold.com.