AN EYE ON YVES

Hamish Bowles spent decades collecting the groundbreaking work of Yves Saint Laurent. Now, he writes, it's going on exhibit in the late designer's Marrakech museum.

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In July of 1984, as a tender 20-year-old correspondent for Australian Harper's Bazaar, I was summoned to attend Yves Saint Laurent's haute couture show. The great designer, it should be said, was rather befuddled by this time: While it wasn't so much his age (he was only 47—younger, after all, than I am now), he simply seemed lost in his own world. However, he was still razor-sharp when it came to his work—and in any case Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent's onetime romantic partner and the company's defender of the gate, snarled at anyone who got in his way, and made sure the show ran like clockwork.

The fall show had come at the end of the week dedicated to the Parisian haute couture houses—Karl Lagerfeld, then newly arrived at Chanel, was making a splash; there were also Emanuel Ungaro, Madame Grès, Hubert de Givenchy, and on it went. Yves's show, however, was eclipsing, his clothes perfection of cut and drape and color and form—as they drifted very slowly through the grand 1880s ballroom of the Hotel Intercontinental.