Infamous designer Yves Saint Laurent, who reinvented the fashion industry by putting women into elegant pantsuits that came to define how modern women dressed, has died, aged 71. Spokesperson Pierre Berge said Saint Laurent died at his Paris home following a long illness. A towering figure of 20th century fashion, Yves Saint Laurent was widely considered the last of a generation that included Christian Dior and Coco Chanel and made Paris the fashion capital of the world, with the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank, as its elegant headquarters. When the designer announced his retirement in 2002 at age 65 and the closure of the Paris-based haute couture house he had founded 40 years earlier, it was mourned in the fashion world as the end of an era. His ready-to-wear label, Rive Gauche, which was sold to Gucci in 1999, still has boutiques around the world. In October 2006, Saint Laurent slipped and fell outside a Paris restaurant during Fashion Week, suffering slight scratches but reminding fans of the perennially fragile designer's advancing age. In 1954, Yves Saint Laurent enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale school of haute couture, but student life lasted only three months. He was introduced to Christian Dior, then regarded as the greatest creator of his day, and Dior was so impressed with Saint Laurent's talent that he hired him on the spot. When Dior died suddenly in 1957, Saint Laurent was named head of the House of Dior at the age of 21. The next year, his first solo collection for Dior, the "trapeze" line, launched Saint Laurent's stardom. The trapeze dress, with its narrow shoulders and wide, swinging skirt, was a hit and a breath of fresh air after years of constructed clothing, tight waists and girdles. "More than any other designer since Chanel, YSL represented Paris as the style leader," The Independent of London wrote in an editorial after Saint Laurent's retirement. "By putting a woman in a man's tuxedo, he changed fashion forever, in a style that never dated." In his own words, Saint Laurent said he felt "fashion was not only supposed to make women beautiful, but to reassure them, to give them confidence, to allow them to come to terms with themselves." When he bowed out of fashion in 2002, Yves Saint Laurent spoke of his battles with depression, drugs and loneliness, though he gave no indication that those problems were directly tied to his decision to stop working. "I've known fear and terrible solitude," he said. "Tranquilizers and drugs, those phony friends. The prison of depression and hospitals. I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober."
