YSL co-founder Pierre Bergé has spoken out about his relationship with Yves Saint Laurent.
In an interview with the New York Times, he said of the designer who died in 2008: "He was a manic-depressive, absolutely.
"He was manic-depressive, exactly what the word means, manic and depressive. This means periods when he did every sort of thing crazy with happiness, and then the next day, it was blackness.
“It was depression that drove him towards alcoholism, and afterwards a little towards drugs. Voilà."
Bergé, who co-founded the iconic fashion house, says his former partner was never content with his successes.
He added: "Even with a wonderful collection, he was a very, very unhappy, unhappy guy.
"More than that. More than unhappy. Really. I just tried to help him from time to time. I never complained. Never. It's an illness, nothing else. It is just an illness."
Bergé has more recently provided the narrative for a new documentary on the pair's relationship, named ‘Crazy Love’, launching in America today.
The film focuses in particular on the 2009 Christie's auction, where Bergé sold more than 200 artworks that he and Saint Laurent had accumulated during their time together. He says that in hindsight he would rather have used the collection in a different way.
He said: "It would have been a museum that married art with fashion.
"I made money with fashion. And I wanted to show that fashion was the origin of the money for the art. I wanted to do it."
