Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent was twenty-one when Christian Dior died in 1957 and he was named his successor. His Trapeze collection the following year made him famous, but in 1960 he was called up for military service, suffered a breakdown and was replaced at Dior. With his partner, Pierre Bergé, and an American backer, he founded his own house in December 1961, showing his first collection in January 1962.

Over the next two decades Saint Laurent changed how women dressed. He borrowed from the male wardrobe and the street: the pea coat, the safari jacket, the jumpsuit and, in 1966, Le Smoking, a tuxedo for women that was shocking at the time and is now a classic. He drew on art, from the Mondrian dresses of 1965 to homages to Picasso, Matisse and Braque, and on far-off places, from Russia to Morocco, where he and Bergé kept a house in Marrakech. In 1966 he opened Saint Laurent Rive Gauche on the rue de Tournon, the first ready-to-wear boutique founded by a couturier, a move that brought designer fashion to a wider public.

The house's business passed through several owners, including Charles of the Ritz and the pharmaceutical group Sanofi. In 1999 the Gucci Group, now Kering, bought it. Tom Ford took over ready-to-wear, after Alber Elbaz's brief tenure on Rive Gauche, while Saint Laurent continued to design haute couture until he retired in January 2002, when the couture house closed. He died in Paris in June 2008.

Stefano Pilati, Ford's deputy, led the house from 2004 to 2012 and introduced the Muse and Downtown bags and the Tribute sandal. In 2012 Hedi Slimane returned, moved the studio to Los Angeles, dropped "Yves" from the ready-to-wear name and remade the house in a rock-and-roll image of skinny jeans, leather jackets and short dresses. Sales grew sharply, and he left in 2016.

Anthony Vaccarello, a Belgian designer known for sharp, sensual eveningwear, was appointed in April 2016. Over a decade he made the house a symbol of night-time Paris glamour, with towering shoulders, sheer blouses and leather, and launched Saint Laurent Productions, a film company that has produced work by Pedro Almodóvar and David Cronenberg. Revenue rose to about €3.3 billion in 2022 before slipping back in the industry slowdown.

Saint Laurent confirmed on 9 October 2026 that Vaccarello was leaving after his spring 2027 show, with new creative leadership to be announced. The founder's legacy is kept by the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Paris and its counterpart in Marrakech, both opened in 2017, while the house itself waits for its next chapter.