A humiliated man who built a fashion empire
August is the hottest month of the summer in Algeria, a country that is mainly formed by an arid landscape and a Mediterranean coast. If you see the photos of this unique country, you would never imagine that this was the birthplace of Yves Saint Laurent.
Born on August 1, 1936, Yves was the fruit of the relationship between Charles and Lucienne, a French couple that were living in the Algerian coastal city of Oran. Under French colonial rule, the city became the second-largest city in Algeria.
Due to the city’s importance, the Saint Laurent family created a high social profile in the city thanks to the businesses of Yves’ father. The family origins in Algeria can be tracked back to 1872, when Yves’ grandparents fled from France during the Franco-Prussian War.
Yves’ mother, Lucienne, was born on Algerian soil, but she had a Belgian-Spanish heritage, which contrasted with the French origins of her husband. In those times, a woman’s only option for advancement in life was to marry a suitable husband.
Sadly, Lucienne was aware of this, she knew that a married woman didn’t have the “right” to care about her looks as she did when she was single. Lucienne had an empty childhood, and she tried to avoid passing on the same destiny to her children.
Saint Laurent had a lovely childhood thanks to Lucienne’s dedication and care. Meanwhile his father was traveling for business, his mother was stimulating him to play, draw, and even do some theater, something for which Yves fell in love at first sight.
The young Yves witnessed his mother trying to wear nice clothes and makeup at home to feel “alive” from her life as a wife, and this affected Yves forever.
Yves started to cut up the fashion magazines and make designs with drawings on them. He designed clothes for Lucienne, and for his sisters, Michèle and Brigitte.
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Yves design for the paper doll he made, 1953. (© Fondation Pierre Bergé — Yves Saint Laurent)
Furthermore, Yves started to read French literature, which fed the artistic imagination that he needed. At one point, he was able to imagine Paris without ever being in France.
The torture begins
Yves went to school like any other upper-class child in his age. Because of his genuine nature, it didn’t take long for him to become the target of bullying by his classmates.
At such times, particularly in Algeria, the image of the man was based on being “stronger and manly,” and any man who dared to challenge this notion became a target.
Saint Laurent was raised in an environment of love and care by his mother, and for him, this segregated system was a psychological torture. During these years of school, Yves suffered abuse and physical violence from his classmates.
His “unmanly” nature caused him a nightmare that shaped his shy character. His sexual desires toward men were taboo. Yves had to hide his sexuality due to the violence towards homosexuals in French and Algerian societies.
An escape
At the age of 17, after finishing school and with the support of his mother, Saint Laurent moved to Paris in 1954 and enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.
The chambre is known as the most prestigious institute of fashion in France. Saint Laurent designs quickly gained notice and popularity.
Michel De Brunhoff, the editor of Vogue in France at the time, introduced Yves Saint Laurent to the French designer Christian Dior. It didn’t take so long for Yves to work for Dior, and in 1957, he became the main design director after the tragic death of Dior.
During the time Saint Laurent was the design director of Dior, the fashion brand enjoyed unbeatable success, which saved the brand from financial ruin.
Saint Laurent was creating a revolutionary way to design dresses, and his name was spreading worldwide. His work was so admired that Farah Diba chose him to design the dress for her marriage with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, king of Iran at the time.
Sadly, in the same way he rose, The downfall came faster than he could imagine.
The "enemy" at the gates
1959 was the turning point, not only for Saint Laurent but also for France… the country was suffering a social and political crisis due to the Algerian War of Independence.
This chaos made the public far more conservative and repulsive to new aesthetics, and Yves suffered those repulsive consequences in his autumnal collection for 1960.
Inspired by the street fashion of the beatnik, a cultural movement that followed an anti-materialistic lifestyle, the 1960’s autumn collection was a shock for Dior’s customers. This shock resulted in a massive backlash and poor sales, which caused financial harm to Dior.
Simultaneously, France forced the conscription for the Algerian War and targeted famous people as propaganda for the recruitment.
Dior needed an excuse to fire Yves, and the conscription was the perfect excuse for it. Few weeks after the law was published. Saint Laurent was drafted on September 1, 1960.
The "Inferno"
The professional soldiers were sent to the frontlines, and the conscripts were trained for patrol in the Algerian cities. Yves knew about this, and panic took him unmercifully.
A mix of emotions, traumas, and fears led him to depression just before the bootcamp. For Saint Laurent, the idea of being hostile and even kill people from his homeland is unforgivable.
The situation got worse after Yves entered the bootcamp. The “manly’ environment of the army, the bad conditions, and the rude coexistence with other recruits due to his Algerian origins led Saint Laurent to despair.
The environment was a military version of the school trauma. 19 days after entering the bootcamp, Saint Laurent had a nervous collapse.
He was sent to the hospital, but it was not enough for him because he knew he would be sent back briefly. Shortly after, he had another nervous collapse, and, because of it, the military sent him to a mental hospital.
The place was forgotten by God. With terrible installations and a mix of unstable people, bad medical procedures, and abuse of psychological drugs, Saint Laurent lived a living hell that almost killed him.
During his two months of confinement, he was drugged on a daily basis with strong medications such as chlorpromazine, a medication used to treat schizophrenia. Yves had no visitors, and was exposed to patients in deplorable mental health conditions.
Apart from the drugs, he was also subjected to electroshock therapy. Alone, with under medical abuse and harassment by other patients, Saint Laurent became a 36 kg fragile soul with no faith in the future.
The comeback
Saint Laurent’s boyfriend, Pierre Bergé, did everything in his power to take Yves out of the hospital, and on November 14, 1960, on Berge’s birthday, Yves was released from the hospital and from military service.
The joy quickly turned to rage when Yves discovered that Dior had fired him and replaced him with a colleague called Marc Bohan.
Bohan was known as a conservative designer who did not like to take risks. In other words, Bohan was the complete opposite of Saint Laurent.
This was a slap in the face of Yves, whose genuine vision of design saved the fashion brand that now despised him.
Saint Laurent didn’t think twice and decided to open his own brand to show his full potential as a designer.
After getting money from his broken contract with Dior and from an American investor, Maison Yves Saint Laurent, or YSL, was founded on November 14, 1961, exactly one year after Yves got out of the mental hospital.
61 years later, the Maison became one of the most famous brand in fashion, having 275 stores worldwide and a revenue of 2.4 billion euros—a far cry from the 700,000 dollars required by Yves to launch YSL.
The sources of the information are from Yves Saint Laurent : a biography (Alice Rawsthorn, 1996), Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, Associated Press and Encyclopaedia Britannica
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