Yves Saint Laurent museum opens

updated 6:03 p.m. ET March 9, 2004

PARIS - The clothes are pure Yves Saint Laurent but they resonate with the influence of Mondrian, Braque, Matisse, Andy Warhol and other modern art greats.

A unique collection of the celebrated couturier’s designs will go on view Wednesday when a new museum opens in Saint Laurent’s former haute couture fashion house near the Champs-Elysees.

Converting the mansion for the new Yves Saint Laurent Foundation took two years. It has exhibition space, offices and storage for 5,000 haute couture dresses Saint Laurent created in his 40 years with his own house. He retired in 2002.

“It’s a fine presentation, and it’s important to keep records like this,” the designer said.

Haute couture gowns, protected in the foundation’s temperature-controlled basement, will be visible only by special request to professionals and perhaps student groups. Also stored are 15,000 haute couture accessories, photographs and original drawings for theater and fashion shows.

The opening show, called “Yves Saint Laurent, a Dialogue With Art,” is a dazzling look at 42 elaborate art-inspired dresses.

They range from amusing numbers with Andy Warhol pop-art themes or the abstract squares of Mondrian that inspired dresses in the 1960s to opulent full-skirted satin dresses of the 1980s inspired by Braque, Matisse, Bonnard and Picasso.

Mixing painting and couture
Some of Saint Laurent’s own modern art pieces are also on view, including a famous quadruple portrait of him by his friend, Warhol.

“I didn’t copy the artists — who would dare to do that?” Saint Laurent writes in the show’s catalog. “But I wanted to weave together the link between painting and couture.

“How could I not have borrowed from van Gogh, his irises, his sunflowers, his wonderful colors?”

The fashion is presented on a serpentine runway-carpet designed by decorator Jacques Grange and the Pompidou Museum’s scenographer, Nathalie Criniere. The layout gives the exhibition a modernist excitement.

“I have saved everything connected to this house from its beginning in 1962,” Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent’s business partner and friend since 1962 and director of the foundation, said.

The first show runs until July 18. The foundation is also talking to photographer Irving Penn, artist David Hockney and theater director Bob Wilson about future exhibitions.

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