Designer Yves Saint Laurent, 71, passed away at his Paris home Sunday evening. According to Pierre Berge, a longtime friend and associate of the legendary couturier, Saint Laurent had been battling an illness for a long time.
Sources told People that the designer entered a Paris hospital last week and fell into a coma Wednesday night.
Saint Laurent "knew that he had revolutionized fashion, that he had revolutionized the second half of the 20th century. His designs accompanied the evolution of women," Berge told French news chain LCI.
The couturier was considered the most influential designer of his time, the last of a generation that included Coco Chanel and Christian Dior and made Paris the epicenter of fashion.
With the Left Bank, or Rive Gauche, as his headquarters, Saint Laurent revolutionized the way women dressed in the 20th century, especially in his elegant pantsuits and classic gowns.
He said that "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."
The designer retired at age 65 in 2002, closing his Paris-based haute couture house as well. Saint Laurent founded the label 40 years ago. Rive Gauche, his ready-to-wear label, was sold to Gucci in 1999.
In an editorial The Independent of London wrote after Saint Laurent's retirement: "More than any other designer since Chanel, YSL represented Paris as the style leader. By putting a woman in a man's tuxedo, he changed fashion forever, in a style that never dated."
Saint Laurent was born Aug. 1, 1936, in Oran, Algeria. He first emerged on the fashion scene at age 17, win he won first prize for a cocktail dress design in a contest sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat.
He rose to prominence when, at age 22, he succeeded Christian Dior following Dior's sudden death in 1957.
According to embroiderer Jacques Lesage, who worked with Saint Laurent for 50 years, "He invented everything. He reinvented everything."
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