Yves Saint Laurent - L'amour Fou

This afternoon I went to the Yves Saint Laurent documentary/movie 'L'amour Fou' with my mum & dad. The movie premiered in Paris on 22 September and when I noticed it was playing in a film house here in The Hague, I was quite intrigued to see it. 

Yves Saint Laurent has been named one of the greatest fashion designers of the twentieth century. Sensitive and tortured soul Yves Saint Laurent & clear-eyed businessman Pierre Bergé met at Christian Dior’s funeral in 1957 and moved in together soon after, embarking on a symbiotic 5 decade long relationship that pretty much lasted until YSL’s death in 2008. Pierre Thoretton’s (Director) L’Amour Fou is the moving and informative story of Saint Laurent and Bergé’s love for each other and for beautiful things - tens of millions of dollars worth of beautiful things! Upon Saint Laurent’s death, Bergé decided to sell their private art collection, that they had spent their lives accumulating. Known as “The Auction of the Century,” this multi-million dollar sale (€374 million to be exact!) heralded the end of an era. L’amour Fou (literally 'mad love') also shows rare material archives and exclusive images of their three fabulous homes – the Parisian apartment on the Rue Babylone, the fantastic Marrakesh compound, and the country house in Normandy.

I definitely enjoyed this documentary. I was blown away by the passion for fashion of Saint Laurent, and also his personality. Bergé says: “He was only really happy two days in a year, when he received the applause from the public during the finales of his S/S and A/W collection”. I was amazed to find out that the extremely shy Saint Laurent was only 21 when he took over the House of Dior and only 4 years later (in 1962) started his own fashion house and became a superstar in the fashionworld. The youth the missed was sadly replaced with alcohol and drugs. However this was not a documentary full with sensation and drama, it was very touching to hear from Pierre Bergé how they both started their fashion house and gradually became more and more succesful, and how all of this influenced their personal relationship: bittersweet...

This biopic of one of the greatest names in fashion will stay with you, and linger in your mind. As Yves Saint Laurent once said, “Fashions fade, style is eternal,” and this gorgeously stylish film will not soon fade from my memory. If you ever get the chance to see this film, I'd definitely recommend seeing it & I think it's a movie even the non-die hard- fashion fans would enjoy!