France Bids Yves a Final Farewell
Friends & fashion elite remember legendary couturier
Friday, June 06, 2008

(PARIS) Yves Saint Laurent was bid a final farewell in appropriately reverent form, as nearly 1,000 guests--and hundreds more onlookers--bottlenecked the immediate area around the Eglise Saint-Roch on Thursday to mourn one of France's national treasures.

As Saint Laurent's coffin arrived at the 17th-century church on the Rue Saint-Honoré, the crowd of bystanders delivered several rounds of applause reverberated from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy ceremoniously adorned Saint Laurent's coffin with the French flag before presenting the designer, who died of brain cancer on Sunday at age 71, with military honors.

A large screen was placed outside of the church for the public to view broadcasts of YSL fashion shows, including the designer's farewell collection in 2002.

Among Saint Laurent's fellow designers who attended the 3:30 p.m. service were Alber Elbaz, Vivienne Westwood, Marc Jacobs, Manolo Blahnik, Stefano Pilati, Giambattista Valli, Riccardo Tisci, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Hubert de Givenchy, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix and Valentino. Giorgio Armani and Hedi Slimane were also expected, but were unable to attend.

Together, the designers were joined by top executives, including Dior chief Sidney Toledano, PPR's François Pinault and Robert Polet, LVMH's Bernard Arnault, models Claudia Schiffer, Ines de la Fressange, Laetitia Casta, Farida Khelfa and Betty Catroux, as well as Catherine Deneuve (carrying a bouquet of wheat), Carine Roitfeld, Bernadette Chirac, Glenda Bailey, André Leon Talley, French Culture minister Christine Albanel and Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

Saint Laurent's immediate family present included Pierre Bergé, his companion and business partner of 50 years; Lucienne Mathieu-Saint Laurent, the late designer's mother, and his sisters Brigitte and Michele.

In honor of the occasion, all YSL stores were closed worldwide for the duration of the ceremony.

Inside, the somber affair was accented by renditions of Vivaldi's "Stabat Mater" and Mozart's "Requiem," not to mention Bellini's "Casta Diva" by Maria Callas.

"He changed couture through his art," said the Reverend Roland Letteron, who conducted the service. He added that Saint Laurent used the art of fashion "to expose the grandeur of life." "We buried another artisan in this church-a gardener," he added, referencing the 17th-century landscape architect André Le Nôtre. "It is more than brocade he prints on silk. It is light."

Deneuve, with a large YSL heart pendant hanging from her neck, then read a poem by Walt Whitman. Bergé followed in suit, delivering a 10-minute tribute on how he first met Saint Laurent and how their relationship would eventually become one of fashion's greatest dynasties. "How could I have imagined that, 50 years later, I would be [standing] here addressing you for the last time?" he said, his voice trembling. "It is to you, you who cannot answer me, that I'm talking." As Bergé, his head lowered, walked past Saint Laurent's coffin, Jacques Brel's "La Chanson des Vieux Amants" played. "Chanel and you were the great couturiers of the twentieth century," he echoed. "She of the first half, you the second."

Following the service, Saint Laurent's coffin was carried out of the church and set on a plinth on the street in front of a row of military officers hoisting bayonets. Saint Laurent's body was subsequently cremated, and his ashes will be placed in an urn in the Majorelle Gardens in Morocco.