tagged 
film, fashion, documentary, haute couture, Yves Saint Laurent in Past is Present, Movie Chic
film, fashion, documentary, haute couture, Yves Saint Laurent in Past is Present, Movie Chic Sunday
03Jun
Master Class
Sunday, June 3, 2007 at 11:55PM 
My fashion education began at home and it began early. I learnt very young that while the monde de la mode may have many planets, it had only one sun: Yves Saint Laurent. In our home, this fact was gospel, and I knew instinctively that it was not to be questioned.
I remembered finding it strange that my fashion school curriculum barely covered the full importance of the YSL legacy. The liberating ingenuity, the philosophical creativity, the subversiveness layered beneath swaths of silk and wool. How could anyone studying fashion not explore this singular oeuvre that informed all of the others?
It was Alice Rawsthorn's biography Yves Saint Laurent that gave me the complete story, yet years later it was the two films by David Teboul that allowed me inside the mind of the master. I remember seeing these at the Roxie Theatre in the Mission District, and sitting utterly entranced for almost three hours. It was like learning how to breathe.
Who do you know that really knows what it's like to visit a Maison de Couture, let alone to work inside of one? These two films work hand-in-hand to provide a complete understanding of the man, his history, and his creative process. The first, entitled Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times, uses interviews, photos, and archival footage to pull together a biography and company history. The second, Yves Saint Laurent: 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris, follows Yves Saint Laurent through the creation of his final spring couture collection.
While they are individual films, I think it's clear that Teboul intended for them to be paired as one. If separated, both would lose their context. After all, without learning of Saint Laurent's near-encyclopedic knowledge of Proust, one could not appreciate his obsessive interest in lapel widths or color combinations. Everything he touches seems to be triggered by a memory inherent in his soul - a line, a shape, the float of a fabric, the cut of a clavicle. It's as though it simply moves through him, that the design ability comes from somewhere preternatural that even he cannot control.
One can see this, and then Saint Laurent himself admits to it. At one point, the filmmaker asks Saint Laurent why, after all of his success, he is still not happy. With a slight smile he replies in his slow, soft speech:
"Oh, that's my character which is very self-critical. I torture myself, I hurt myself. I'm always...not so much afraid - that's too grand a word for it - but when I draw, when I create clothes, I must say, what I go through is terrible. The fear, of course which is unjustified but which overflows...
Let's say it's shadows and light. To reach the light you have to go through the storm...
It's my extreme sensitivity which made this...which gave me this...this marvelous power to create and at the same time this exaggerated sensitivity which eats away at me. There's no creation without pain. I can't envisage creation as something...It's a very happy thing, but to achieve that it's very painful."
Teboul captures that rare moment of self-consciousness wherein an artist recognizes the demon within. The ephemeral force of creation and it's terrible, unshakable burden.
Watching someone like this create is truly extraordinary, a master class in craft, balance, and form, yet one sees that these are merely the vehicles of the aesthetic essence that is merely being translated into three dimensions.
For years I searched Amazon.com and Netflix for these two gems from David Teboul, and finally, they are available on DVD. Both, on one disc. I always enjoy thses kinds of films for a little dose of inspiration - a source of "what it's all about" when I ask "why fashion" - but this one is like drinking from the spring. It shows an albatross of the industry, the way he works, the way his house works - the glimpse is truly a Gosford Park of Haute Couture.
Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times and Yves Saint Laurent: 5 Avenue Marceau, both by David Teboul are now available at Amazon.com and Netflix. The accompanying monograph is also available at Amazon.com.
"C'est ravissant!"
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