MATERIAL WORLD

A vast new Saint Laurent flagship store on Paris' Champs-Élysées reflects creative director Anthony Vaccarello's rigorous, monumental approach to design and realises a long-held wish by the maison's founder

- JACK MOSS

Yves Saint Laurent opened his first Rive Gauche store in September 1966 at 21 Rue de Tournon, in Paris’ 6th arrondissement. Located in a former antiques store in a Left Bank neighbourhood largely known at the time for its distinctly bohemian clientele – the arrondissement is also home to the BeauxArts de Paris art school – it would be the first boutique to sell ready-to-wear clothing by a haute couture designer. ‘I’d had enough of making dresses for jaded billionaires,’ said the designer, who went on to open Rive Gauche stores in London and New York. In 1969, he opened an outpost for men.

A 2011 exhibition on Rive Gauche, subtitled ‘La révolution de la mode’ (the fashion revolution), proves the fashion store is as much a part of Saint Laurent history as cut or silhouette. It’s a mantle picked up by the current creative director Anthony Vaccarello, who each season reinterprets elements of Yves Saint Laurent’s oeuvre in his own seductive style – befitting the house’s Parisian origins, the Belgian designer’s collections have largely been shown with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop, breaking into its glimmering light show at the collection’s climax.