Yves Saint Laurent was such a great man and it is a timeless, wonderful fashion house. In the Sixties and Seventies we lived in Nottingham and our treat was to go to Rive Gauche in Paris and I’d just try to afford anything for Pauline - even just a scarf. Then as we worked more and had a little more money we kept going. Somewhere in storage Pauline has the beautiful red fox fur coat - not very P.C. now - but we bought quite a lot of the ready-to-wear over the years. He really meant a lot to us.
It’s incredibly sad about Yves Saint Laurent - he was too young to die. He was for me, like for many designers, a huge encouragement and influence - there was a newness about his work that was so special.
He took it to the next stage and he just had a sparkle that no one else has. I was fortunate enough to see some of this first haute couture shows in his Paris salon - one in particular I remember was in homage to the Vietnam war and it was all in black. Then he did the famous see-through blouse in clear silk chiffon.
The audience literally took a mass in-take of breath - as if we’d been watching a firework display. Obviously the fact that he pioneered le smoking for women proved how modern his thinking was.