“Les Fleurs d’Yves Saint Laurent”: an infinite source of inspiration from the designer at the heart of an exhibition in Paris

The Flowers of Yves Saint Laurent : a major theme in the couturier’s work is at the heart of the exhibition which is being held at the Yves Saint-Laurent museum in Paris until next May. It is in reality the second part thought up by curators Olivier Saillard and Gaël Mamine, which follows a first chapter started at the Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech museum and still in progress until January 5, 2025.

“It’s a pretty magical theme to understand Yves Saint Laurent”, explains Elsa Janssen, general curator of the Parisian museum. “For what ? Because reading Yves Saint Laurent’s flowers means understanding your life. Starting with his passion for lilies, which is the anagram of YSL. We continue, for example, with lily of the valley, which was the passion of Christian Dior, who was a fundamental figure for Yves Saint Laurent. We continue with the flowers of the Mediterranean that he knew in his childhood in Agérie and the bougainvilleas that he found in Morocco. continues Elsa Janssen.

With his partner Pierre Bergé, the fashion designer lived surrounded by flowers and gardens in his apartments, his second homes and his fashion house. A lover of flora, he found there an infinite source of inspiration. This admiration for nature, he shares with artists and writers, particularly with Marcel Proust, one of his favorite authors as he declares in the magazine L’Egoïste in 1987. The writer’s universe shines through in the designer’s interiors as much as in his fashion shows: when the first likes to describe women as flowers, the second covers them with them to pay homage to them. Thus, throughout the exhibition, the dresses covered with flowers face quotes from Proust.

The visitor discovers the iconic pieces and the know-how that Yves Saint Laurent used to bring his floral creations to life: here, the first applied embroidery of the spring-summer dress of 1962, there the virtuosity of the prints of the spring collection -summer 2001, reference to paintings by Pierre Bonnard.

This dialogue between the arts and the periods continues with Sam Falls, two works of which punctuate the exhibition. Traveling the world, the American artist collected plants and preserved the memory of these floral landscapes by directly printing the pigments on the canvas. The patterns and colors of this recreated nature are in harmony with those presented on the haute couture pieces. Without forgetting the presence of imaginary paper flowers created by the artist Joséphine Pinton, strewn at the foot of the dresses.

The exhibition begins in the small living room with sketches. On June 23, 1957, the Bal des têtes was given on the island of Saint-Louis by Baron Alexis de Rédé, a figure of the café society: “guests were asked to come with a special face”. The organization of the evening is entrusted to Lilia Ralli, an influential woman in the world of fashion, who calls on the young Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, aged 21 and assistant to Christian Dior.

He produced several studies of headdresses and decorations in gouache on paper with flowers, feathers and leaves which can be admired here.

Yves Saint Laurent’s creations do not only maintain a stylistic link with gardens, like day-old bouquets, they evoke vulnerability and in the herbarium of fashion only the clothes remain. In the first room, there is shock in front of incredible embroidered dresses, in volume, with refinement. Adorned with delicate floral embroidery, these creations evoke nature in full bloom where each petal is a tribute to its ephemeral beauty.

All along the route, the scenography is poetic: the fabric dresses interact with imaginary paper flowers made by Joséphine Pinton: “these flowers are really poetic punctuations which somewhat govern the balance between the dresses”, underlines the exhibition curator.

Saint Laurent’s fascination with the floral world was born in the workshops of Christian Dior, where the young couturier took his first steps. With its wide corolla skirts, Dior transformed its women into flowers. Throughout his career, Saint Laurent kept the work of his mentor in mind.

In 1958 for his first collection Trapeze, he pays homage to him by adorning the trim of his hats with sprigs of lily of the valley, Dior’s lucky flowers. “It’s a bit like the first and last tribute to this master who will always be with him,” underlines Elsa Janssen. This flower was even chosen to embellish an organdy blouse from his last collection in 2001. In 1990, Saint Laurent celebrated the work of his master with a collection featuring Louis irises and roses.

Combining his taste for art and the plant world, Yves Saint Laurent regularly explores the work of his favorite artists. Like Henri Matisse and his cut-out gouache collages, for his outfits he selects a background composed of patchwork inserts and applied embroidery.

Upstairs, the work Serpentine, Lakeshore, Overnight by the artist Sam Falls dialogues with fifteen dresses by Yves Saint Laurent. This canvas created in 2023, from flowers picked in the countryside and gardens of the south of France, echoes the nature that once inspired the painter Bonnard.

All couturiers have drawn their inspiration from the floral world: Yves Saint Laurent is part of this tradition and transforms haute couture salons into gardens. Its podiums are framed by walls covered with flowers with heady scents.

He closes his shows with a wedding dress: who could forget, in 1999, Laetitia Casta adorned with larger-than-life silk gazar roses which remains among the designer’s most iconic creations?

The tour of an exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent museum always ends in the designer’s office located on the first floor and with each new exhibition, the scenography changes a little, integrating the theme of the current exhibition devoted to flowers. A central location in this house for nearly thirty years, the studio is the most moving room. If it is striking for its simplicity and contrasts with the sumptuousness of the salons of the time, it matches the working atmosphere that Yves Saint Laurent needed.

In the mirror at the back, he examined the mannequin’s reflection to appreciate the garment. His favorite objects are brought together, his souvenirs and his colored pencil holders. On the edge of her chair, her white coat. At the foot of the desk, his dog Moujik’s bowl. And, in the library, books, the designer’s main sources of inspiration.

Exhibition “Les Fleurs d’Yves Saint Laurent” until May 4, 2025. Yves Saint Laurent Museum. 5, avenue Marceau, 75116 Paris.