Jun 2, 2008, 11:58 GMT
Paris - French designer Yves Saint Laurent, considered one of the most important figures in fashion history, died Sunday in Paris, friend and partner Pierre Berge said.
Berge told RTL radio on Monday that the cause of death was a brain tumor and that Saint Laurent had been ill for a year.
In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Saint Laurent was 'the first (designer) to elevate haute couture to the level of art... Through his creative genius, his elegant and refined, discreet and distinguished personality, he stamped his mark on a half-century of creation.'
Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936, in the port city of Oran, Algeria.
He moved to Paris at age 17 to study fashion at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture after winning first prize in a competition by the International Wool Secretariat.
That prize got him a meeting with designer Christian Dior, who was so impressed with the young man he hired him on the spot as his assistant.
When Dior died of a stroke in 1957, Saint Laurent was appointed head designer at the tender age of 21.
In the 1960s he became famous for his women's tuxedo, and he once said, controversially, that women should wear pants as a uniform.
Saint Laurent's use of men's clothes - such as the peacoat, the trench coat and the tuxedo jacket - for women's fashion was, and still is, considered revolutionary.
'Saint Laurent gave power to women with the men's clothes.... He knew very well that he transformed fashion and the world, that women all over the world owed him something,' Berge said.
Yves Saint Laurent is recognized as the first designer to launch the modern concept of luxury women's ready-to-wear garments, in a 1966 collection called Rive Gauche, which represented the first step in making luxury labels accessible to a wider market.
Saint Laurent was known to have battled depression and drug abuse throughout his career, but he was also known as an ambassador of French fashion.
He retired in 2002, and his brand was taken over by the French luxury group PPR.
Former PPR head Francois Pinault and his son Francois-Henri Pinault, the current company chief, said in a statement that Saint Laurent had 'carried a revolutionary vision of fashion to the highest level... He invented, revised and ultimately transformed all at the service of a passion: to make women radiate and expose their beauty and mystery.'
In 1983, he became the first living designer to be given a show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1985 he was awarded the French Legion of Honour by then-president Francois Mitterrand.
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