By Suzanne S. Brown
The Denver Post
Yves Saint Laurent “worked in opposites,” says Florence Müller, who curated the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition opening today at the Denver Art Museum. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
Tour the Denver Art Museum’s “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective” with Florence Müller and you’ll be treated to the type of inside information known only to those who have devoted their lives to studying and sharing the late fashion designer’s work.
The Irving Penn photograph of Saint Laurent that opens the show? More a snapshot than a portrait, it was unposed, Müller says. He covers most of his face with his hand, demonstrating his shyness, but reveals one sharp, all-seeing eye: his unblinking look at the modern world around him.
That walking stick on Saint Laurent’s desk in his atelier? It was a gift from Christian Dior.
The
Warhol portrait of the designer visitors will see late in the exhibit? It is usually on the wall in the office of Pierre Bergé, YSL’s longtime partner.
PHOTOS SLIDESHOW
View photos of Yves Saint Laurent and his work.
Müller, chief curator of the exhibit with the oversight of Bergé, is a fashion historian, author and curator of a number of costume exhibits, including several about Saint Laurent. She was in Denver late last week overseeing final details of the installation of the exhibit, which includes 200 outfits, a re-creation of the designer’s studio, a mise-en-scène of Catherine Deneuve’s closet, photos and videos. The show opens today and runs through July 8.
To understand Saint Laurent, she says, you must accept that there were two sides to him. He continually worked in opposites. That’s why he put women in haute couture versions of peacoats and workers’ uniforms. It’s why he worked at a minimalist trestle-style desk but had another office that was decorated in opulent late-18th-century style. “He was a person of modernity but on the other hand he was full of nostalgia and liked to escape in time,” Müller said.
The show is arranged thematically, covering YSL’s “gender revolution” of putting women in pants for both day and
This safari outfit was created for the model Veruschka to wear in a 1968 shoot for French Vogue magazine.(Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
evening occasions; a tribute to some of the famous women he dressed; and the “scandal” years of the 1970s when he posed nude for a men’s fragrance advertising campaign. (Exclusive to the Denver show are a series of 14 photographs from the shoot by Jeanloup Sieff.)
Visitors are likely to be in awe of the exhibition’s middle sections, where they are taken on YSL’s costume travels through Morocco and Asia, Russia, Asia and India. “He didn’t really like to travel,” Müller said, with the exception of Morroco and his various homes in Marrakech.
A section devoted to African art and European artists including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse captivates with bold color and prints.
Guests expecting to see some of the
Though he wasn’t an avid traveler, Saint Laurent took inspiration from around the globe, including Morocco for this richly patterned resort look.
designer’s famous “le smoking” outfits based on men’s tuxedos will get an eyeful: a wall of 40 black outfits in every incarnation from shorts to jumpsuits. And it faces “The Last Ball,” a red-carpeted staircase full of mannequins in stunning evening gowns.
Muller says she loves the way the show looks in the Denver Art Museum’s Daniel Libeskind-designed Hamilton wing, which opened in 2006. In Paris, the exhibition was held at the century-old Petit Palais. “This exhibition emphasizes the modernity of Saint Laurent. It brings the story into today.”
And that’s the point she hopes people will take away from the YSL. “He wanted to create a life achievement that in the end was like the ouevre of an artist,” she says, noting that at the same time it was important to him to “encounter the reality of the everyday life of a woman. He has achieved these two things.”
Suzanne S. Brown: sbrown
