Always in fashion

Two French documentaries about Yves Saint Laurent showcase the legendary designer's love of clothes and the women who wear them.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Jan 9, 2004 | An era ended when Yves Saint Laurent retired in 2002: Although there are still a meager handful of designers working in couture (as opposed to the much less costly ready-to-wear), Saint Laurent was surely the last of the greatest. But perhaps even more unsettling than the idea of no new Saint Laurent garments, ever, is the fact that Saint Laurent has taken with him a way of looking at clothing that goes beyond scrutinizing the placement of a dart or the way a swath of fabric drapes -- his gift was a muscular intertwining of instinct and craftsmanship, of artistry and impulse, that goes unmatched today, even among our most talented designers.

Two French documentaries by David Teboul (they make their American debut at Film Forum in New York this week, and with luck, moviegoers in other cities will have a chance to see them in the coming months) clue us in to Saint Laurent's distinctive way of seeing, as well as illuminate his charmingly old-fashioned and organic mode of working. "Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times" (which is essentially a biography) and "Yves Saint Laurent: 5, Avenue Marceau, 75116 Paris" (a chronicle of one of the designer's last collections) aren't spectacular documentaries in terms of either their craftsmanship or their clarity -- if you don't already have a little background on Saint Laurent, you might find yourself a bit confused by the truncated storytelling of "His Life and Times," in particular.

Yet the two movies are fascinating and valuable pieces of work: They're visual tone poems that simultaneously tell the story of a great and mysterious artist and grab the last trailing threads of a quickly vanishing era. Teboul received permission to enter the atelier (or workroom) of the notoriously reclusive Saint Laurent to record the genesis of a collection, with "5, Avenue Marceau" as the result. He then went on to make the second documentary, "His Life and Times," which is less intimate but more cleanly structured. What's lovely about the two documentaries, taken either together or as separate pieces of work, is that they're not made for "fashion people." Teboul treats us all, men and women of any nation, as if we were French men: That is, he assumes that we take an interest in fashion the way French men do, not just because fashion showcases the human body but because it's fascinating to watch how it changes along with the culture around it.

"His Life and Times" includes clips of a Saint Laurent fashion show from the 1960s, in which a male viewer gazes rapturously at the women strolling the runway. Sure, the models are lookers, and that's no doubt part of their appeal to him. But I wonder if he'd wear the same look of engaged delight if the women were stark naked? The spectacle of the clothes is surely part of the sexual illusion. Elsewhere in the movie, Saint Laurent himself, in interview footage from the early 1970s, says that "seduction has replaced elegance." It's a brash, fashion-designery statement that makes a good sound bite, but there's a nugget of truth within its glossy shell: Seduction is often a natural component of elegance, as we can see in both the traditional tuxedo as worn by, say, Fred Astaire (whose elegance was so heightened it was a kind of eroticism), and the softened version that Saint Laurent himself perfected, famously known as le smoking.

Where do ideas like le smoking come from? What kind of man comes up with this stuff? The one we see in "His Life and Times" -- which includes interview footage from 2001 as well as clips of interviews given by Saint Laurent throughout his more than 40-year career -- is both reserved and dauntingly confident. His longtime business partner (and, for many years, his lover as well), Pierre Bergé, refers to Saint Laurent as a megalomaniac -- but he says it with a mix of fondness and matter-of-factness that assures us it's not an insult. In both the contemporary footage and the vintage stuff, Laurent never looks comfortable talking about himself or his work: He bows his head; he averts his gaze, looking anywhere but into the eyes of the interviewer. That may be pure shyness, but it could also be the mark of a man who lives and works so deeply within his own mind that tiptoeing into the real world even once in a while is just too much of a shivery jolt.

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