Wear and Tear
Anne Hollander
- Yves St Laurent: A Biography by Alice Rawsthorn
HarperCollins, 405 pp, £20.00, November 1996, ISBN 0 00 255543 3
Alice Rawsthorn begins her book about Yves St Laurent with a dramatic prologue evoking a period late in the designer’s career, specifically the end of January and the beginning of February 1990. This opening functions as a sort of morality play, suggesting how we might view the story that follows. Yves St Laurent is introduced receiving a 13-minute ovation for his 1990 spring couture collection, a show comprising many dazzling examples of his homage to the clients, artists and predecessors who have inspired him for thirty years. At the finale, the 53-year-old designer mounts the runway looking fit and happy, and with unprecedented bonhomie he invites a select number of the adoring crowd to dinner in his own home, a huge Paris duplex laden with rare objects and hung with Goyas, Matisses and Warhols.
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