St. Laurent's Most Scandalous Collection

Saint Laurent's "1940s" couture show for spring 1971 shocked the establishment for its brazen, unsentimental hommage to the Paris of the 1940s, of the Occupation years which paralyzed the whole city in a constant state of fear and terror, and for the clothes' blatant disregard for that most basic rule of haute couture: decorum. YSL's message was simple: dress to seduce;he was egregiously misinterpreted.

The "1940s" show was fearless, bold and wholly original, unprecedented at the time in the way the clothes were styled and presented, which infuriated couture's oldest patrons, repelled at the sight of a model sashaying down the couture salon wearing nothing but a chubby fur coat in the most livid shade of green, below, worn with black hosiery and patent leather platforms that instantly brought back long-buried memories of the war years.

Saint Laurent, for them, had gone too far. But exactly how far, no one could fathom. He was crucified mercilessly by the press, with the imperious fashion critic of the International Herald Tribune, Eugenia Sheppard, leading the protests with a viciously vindictive review, the headline of which read: Yves St. Debacle, duly banning her from Maison YSL for several years. (Bergé, hot-blooded man that he is, saw to that.)

 Clearly, the matronly doyennes of haute couture had expected to see something else. Instead, they were treated to a défilé whose key silhouette (strong, wide shoulders; utilitarian) opened the flood gates of memory. The publicity garnered from the fiasco brought Saint Laurent the notoriety that, one suspects, he craved since he was a taunted schoolboy who would either go home in tears or in tatters; fame vindicated him. At around this time, he posed nude for the evocative lens of Jeanloup Sieff to promote his latest men's fragrance called YSL Pour Homme. The photograph of him stark naked, lounging in some kind of leather cushion, received as much publicity as the scandalous "1940s" show itself.

.Saint Laurent's late 1950s image, that of a painfully shy young man who could hardly look interviewers straight in the eye, had become the icon of erotic style, a man who has finally embraced, quite fully, his own (homo)sexuality.