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Yves Saint Laurent images, at his Paris museum (Photo: Lea Lane)
If you need another reason to (re)visit Paris and Marrakech, the new YSL museums have provided it. Each is special, but visiting both would make one spectacular pilgrimage: a perfectly complementary design odyssey.
Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé were the power couple of 20th-century fashion. After Saint Laurent’s death in 2008, Bergé dedicated himself to ensuring the great designer’s legacy. Just before his death this September, Bergé established the museums through the Fondation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent. They both opened in October in the fabulous venues YSL lived in, worked in and loved.
The YSL museum, Paris (Photo: Lea Lane)
The museum at YSL’s former headquarters on Rue Marceau is the first in Paris to exclusively display the work of one fashion designer. The historic studio showroom and haute-couture house in the 16th arrondissment is where Saint Laurent designed and showed his clothing.
You enter the salons through the same door and go up the stairs as his clients would have. You can also visit the studio where twice a year St. Laurent designed his haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. Sketches and worksheets are scattered about as if the shy genius were about to enter.
YSL’s designs on display (Photo: Lea Lane)
One room includes mannequins and collection boards used to organize his shows. And several rooms on different floors offer a thematic exhibition and history of fashion through prototypes of his creations, from 1962 to 2002. Also conserved are matching accessories such as jewelry, shoes, gloves and hats, along with sketches, photos and videos.
Lea Lane
Yves Saint Laurent was born in the North African country of Algeria. He first visited Morocco in the 60s, and bought a house, Villa Oasis, in Marrakech in 1966 with his then-partner Pierre Bergé. Saint Laurent often designed his collections while in Marrakech, inspired by the colors and shapes.
Created by Studio KO architects, the Saint Laurent museum in Marrakech (mYSLm) reflects the curves of the designer’s work. It features Moroccan stone, and architecture appropriate for the hot climate. The mYSLm has been designed using state-of-the-art conservation technologies for both Yves Saint Laurent’s couture and the Berber artifacts that are displayed in the Berber Museum next door.
In the dramatic main gallery, filled with music and visuals, dresses are displayed on dark platforms – with projected images of alternating statements and YSL in a white suit looking gentle and artsy.
Colors suggest the bright textiles of traditional outfits from the souks of Marrakech, including his 1967 African collection and his ‘Saharienne’ jacket of 1968. The clothing resembles some of the Berber outfits already on display at the garden’s existing Berber museum. Other evening pieces are darker. All are elegant.
In addition to its permanent exhibition space, a temporary exhibitions space, a 130-seat auditorium, a book shop, a cafe restaurant, a library and research center with 5,000 books, are all part of this new building. The museum will preserve some of the collection of 5,000 clothing items and 15,000 accessories.
The lush gardens adjoining the new museum (Photo: Lea Lane)
The Jardin Majorelle is a celebration of Berber culture and exotic plants, rescued by the late designer and his partner in 1980, and now adjacent to the new museum. The gardens are a stunning combo of vibrant green foliage and Majorelle blue accents, created by the French artist Jacques Majorelle who originally owned the home and gardens. They had fallen into disrepair when the couple bought the property.
The Berber museum — adjacent and also worth a visit (Photo: Lea Lane)
Majorelle’s former atelier is now the Berber museum. Thousands of Berber artifacts collected by Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent stand in a dazzling display inside the Berber museum.
Reached through a side gate, Villa Oasis, Majorelle’s renamed house has also been open for select visits since 2015. The property was built on land acquired by Majorelle in the 1920s. Saint Laurent’s ashes were scattered here, and a memorial stands to him and to his partner, in the public gardens.
Differences between the Marrakesh and the Paris museums? The Marrakech auditorium offers a music and film program, and the adjacent gardens and Berber museum. The Paris museum is housed in the historical fashion house, as if YSL were still working there. Both offer a complete overview of the lush world of a legendary French designer.
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