PRIDE OF PLACE

Luxuriate in the bon vivant lifestyle and impeccable taste of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé through the fall 2022 release of Assouline, Yves Saint Laurent At Home

- Chit L Lijauco with Christine Andas

Eclecticism defined the aesthetic of the design genius Yves Saint Laurent. "He was as interested in nineteenth-century art as he was in Orientalism, Russian folk art or Art Deco. He was interested in everything about any era that appealed to him," wrote Jacques Grange in the book Yves Saint Laurent at Home, photographed by Marianne Haas and published by Assouline.

The beautiful tome features the four homes of Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé, who saw that the designer's visions were executed perfectly. "We were lucky enough to jump from one [home] to the other and live as we wished in Paris, Normandy, Marrakech, and Tangier. We didn't have a favourite house. We tried to understand them, provide for them, and make them love themselves. I believe that they returned our affection," said Bergé.

Four homes were easy to fill for an avid collector like Saint Laurent. Though his taste was perfectly matched by Bergé and the homes beautifully designed by Grange, whom he trusted, Saint Laurent was very much involved, even exacting, in every detail. Haas remembered being called to task by the designer for moving a three-piece sculpture by Constantin Brancusi and reassembling it wrongly. "But the sculpture had looked okay to us," Haas wrote. "It was always tricky to move an object, even a centimetre: He saw any error immediately, and it drove him crazy.