Fashionable gays, tell me about Yves Saint Laurent

Beautiful junkie. Genius.

Didn't know he was a junkie. Would you recommend the film, OP?

R2 I liked it. Gaspard Ulliel gave a good performance. It's a bit meandering and feels plot-less sometimes, but it has great visuals. I'd give it a 7/10.

There's another YSL biopic that came out in 2014 aptly titled Yves Saint Laurent, starring Pierre Niney. He won the Cesar award for his portrayal of YSL, but it sounds pretty boring.

1976 Russian Collection

Anything? Any gossip on Jacques de Bascher?

I watched Celebration a Yves Saint Laurent documentary about him around 1998/1999. The drugs really tool their toll on him. He was only 60 in the documentary, if I didn't know better you'd think he was 80 with dementia. He has ticks and tremors and looks like he's about to doze off at any second. I think there's one scene with his cigarette looks to have over an inch of ash hanging from it, not bothering to flick it off.

I can see why Pierre Berge suppressed the documentary. However, Pierre Berge comes off as the huge asshole he was. Loulou de la Falaise and Laeitia Casta are dolls. I recommend it.

tool = took

Bump!

I’ve compared both Saint Laurent films and both were good but to be honest the one with Pierre Niney was the best out of the two. I could see why it won the Caesars Award.

It was polished and greatly refined not to mention the production values on the film.

He had bipolar disorder and self medicated with drugs. Fucked everyone, was insanely rich, his houses were filled with the most beautiful, priceless museum quality pieces. Berge was a cunt but he did love YSL and protected and cared for him even when their relationship was long over.

He restored the fascinating Jardon Marjorelle in Morocco, a Cubist estate, and it is now open to the public.

r10 His and Berge's ashes are there in the garden

He kept a apartment in Paris just for sex.

#an apartment

Objectively I have always thought that the OP's picture was one of the great male nude photographs; YSL looks almost like a Gothic figure - starved and fragile, naked rather than nude - but then the softness of his hair and the fullness of his mouth indicate sensuality - and then the eyeglasses provide an almost surreal note.

What a beautiful man without being even a little bit handsome.

The ravages of mental illness, psychotropic drugs, shock therapy, and drug and alcohol use fucked with his brain pretty bad. Somewhat of a genius in his day. Tom Ford said he was nasty. Became a recluse later in life.

Morocco villa. The library at Villa Oasis is awfully busy.

The Pierre Niney film had the support of Berge and the use of YSL archives. Pierre Niney was fugly though, Gaspard was gorgeous and showed his nice dick.

I think he was soooo cute when he was young. And his dorky smile was adorable. In the pantheon of gay genius for sure.

Even HRH Queen Bitch Karl Lagerfeld acknowledged that YSL was the superior designer, and Karl was ruthlessly competitive.

YSL was a sad genius. I think Lagerfeld genuinely enjoyed his own life more.

He had a great ass, but he couldn't live forever.

The museum in Paris is worth seeing. Many of his pieces, from the 60s through the 80s, could easily be worn today and not look dated.

He seemed to be very fragile, hypersensitive, quintessential tortured genius

His appearance on What's My Line? in 1965.

R15 Yes, I remember reading that Yves wrote some really nasty letters to Tom Ford when he was designing the YSL ready to wear collections. I don't even think Yves attended Tom Ford's shows, attending Hedi Slimane's shows for Dior Homme instead.

R19 High praise from Karl! I recall Saint Laurent and Langerfeld feuding over a mutual lover for a while.

His gorgeous ex- lover Fabrice Thomas speaks

Handsome back in the day

R26 What is he talking about? Can someone translate? What's the dirt?

Bump! Can someone give us the rundown on the interview at R26?

Here's Yves answering the Proust questionnaire, asked by Berge.

I prefer the Ulliel film -- it's more stylish, lavish, and extremely sexy -- it feels like you're actually dropped into the period. I like its meandering qualities, it's a time and place one wants to get lost in!

Another video of YSL answering the Proust questionnaire, this one is from 1968.

You have to see David Taboul's two films on Laurent. They're marvelous.

Any of these films on Netflix?

It looks like Yves Saint Laurent, the film starring Pierre Niney (not Ulliel), and Celebration (R5) are on Tubi.

The two films by David Taboul. They make a wonderful complementary set, one focussing on his life, and the other following him and his staff in his legendary atelier on Avenue Marceau in Paris, preparing a collection. Both are wonderful, and available on Amazon.

His Mondrian dress was brilliant and perfect for that time.

It's good we also have a basically useless big money field to ourselves like the breeders have team sports.

5 Avenue Marceau is on YouTube in 11 parts.

9 parts, can't read.

There's also this doc from 1992.

I did a bit of investigating and found the two documentaries mentioned by R35 on a weird Chinese video host. It's watchable and interesting!

He seems like he's on the spectrum

his 1973 through 80 collections saved women's fashion and certainly saved "Pret a porter" industry standards forever...........

An esteemed talent who quite literally overnight went from a very young assistant to Christian Dior to being Head of Dior.

While it’s very much a Vehicle for Pierre Berge, L’Amour Fou by Pierre Thoretton is gorgeous two watch and an interesting counter point to the realness of Celebration. (Thoretton is Catherine Deneuve’s son-in-law.)

R42 I think it's the effects of decades-long heavy drug and alcohol abuse.

R45 He was also bipolar and depressed, which adds to him seeming odd.

R47 Yeah, in addition to that.

He was a cutie as young man. Charming to in this dorky way.

A very young Yves and Karl Lagerfeld

Forgot to comment that Karl always spoke well of Yves, pre-Pierre Bergé, and maintained that Yves was quite funny and pleasant until he met Bergé.

Loulou de la Falaise, Yves and Karl at Paloma Picasso's wedding:

Is it true that Yves, Pierre Berge and Victoire Doutreleau were in a menage a trois?

Was Loulou de la Falaise a bitch? She always came across as an entitled spoilt selfish bitch.

Leon Talley's autobiography- the last one- had some good anecdotes about YSL and Lagerfield, including their disagreement over the same guy.

R4 that is an incredible collection. But question- what is the deal with all of the people walking across the runway while there is still a model on it at the end of the collection. WTF It's like a game at Madison Square Garden with people trying to beat the traffic. Does that still happen?

r53 A bisexual always ruins things!

R53 Can't remember the source of this ALT anecdote from (maybe the recent autobiography or the documentary about him?), but iirc, someone in the YSL camp used to refer to ALT as "Queen Kong" behind his back.

I'd never heard of ALT and when I first saw a photo of ALT he was obese and had this weird gettup on, robes and leopard print pashmina or something, I thought he was the King of some small impoverished African country

ALT could have been handsome had he been slim and perhaps tweaked his nose. But he chose to be obese.

ALT wasn't always always humongous.

Lagerfeld looks like Perez Hilton in R50. Cool pic

R52 There is currently a Loulou bag in the YSL handbag collection.

It was funny seeing ALT out with Lee Radziwill, this big hulking black mountain next to a tiny pale emaciated bird.

Was he POZ?

ALT was just a fat fag

R60 I can imagine Karl rolling in his grave at being compared to Perez Hilton.

All I know is he like rough Moroccan trade and his former place there is (was?) a boutique hotel.

Yves and Jacques de Bascher

I had no idea Pierre Berge was also bisexual. Seems like Yves had a type.......

r69 If you're referring to the Madison Cox he married, Madison Cox is a man!

Jacques de Bascher was ugly, can't believe both YSL and Karl were besotted with him. What was his appeal?

R70 Maybe he was horse hung?

R56 the woman who allegedly started calling ALT “Queen Kong” behind his back around Paris was Clara Saint. She was head of P.R. for Saint Laurent for decades, but not related despite sharing part of his last name.

Clara was the daughter of a rich Chilean father who had settled in Paris and is probably most famously known as the woman who, along with French police, helped Rudolf Nureyev escape from his KGB handlers at Le Bourget Airport in 1961 and defect from the USSR.

ALT claims that Paloma Picasso took him aside at a party and told him about the “Queen Kong” rumors because she thought it would be better for him to hear it from a friend rather than be caught off guard. Clara adamantly denies ever calling ALT by the name… so who knows? It’s conceivable that maybe even Paloma was actually the guilty party and told ALT it was Clara to throw the scent off her.

R28

Translation:

what would you like to do now in life?

I would like to go away for a long time and do nothing, forget everything, and see if I still want to design dresses.

I just wztched the subtitled dramatization Yves St Laurent on tubi. I like watching any story set in an atelier with fashion shows. and any story set in Paris. Lots of luxe interiors, drugs and sex scenes, seemed believable.

Bump!

I was going to add Jacques de Bascher looks average at best. The Beautiful Fall by Alicia Drake is a good book to read about Karl and Yves.

I know someone who once pronounced it 'why vez sane t la ront'

Pierre Bergé didn't get the appeal of Jacques de Bascher either, obviously, he wrote: “I never understood how you could have fallen in love with an effeminate seducer, straight out of an operetta, conceited and anything but well hung.”

Also, according to Bergé, Lagerfeld called him up one night and threatened to release the psycho love letters YSL sent to de Bascher as blackmail. Apparently the letters frightened Lagerfeld.

I would never call YSL handsome. He was extremely talented and a great designer. I don’t know whether he was bipolar, but he was definitely very troubled, self destructive and an addict. Kind of a sad life aside from his great talent.