The French fashion designer, Yves Saint Laurent, has died in Paris. He was 71.
Mr Saint Laurent had been in poor health for some time.
Considered by many the greatest fashion designer of the 20th century, he suffered mental and physical ill health for much of his life and was rarely seen in public.
Saint Laurent black trouser suits and safari jackets became an icon of women's liberation in the 1960s.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said ‘One of the greatest names of fashion has disappeared, the first to elevate haute couture to the rank of art.’
At the time of his retirement in 2002, Mr Saint Laurent said he had ‘always given the highest importance of all to respect for this craft, which is not exactly an art, but which needs an artist to exist.’
One of a handful of designers who dominated 20th century fashion - with Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and Paul Poiret - Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent was born in Oran, Algeria, on 1 August 1936, when the north African country was a still French territory.
A shy, lonely, child, he was taunted over his homosexuality and became fascinated by clothes, and had already a solid portfolio of sketches when he first arrived in Paris in 1953, aged 17.
Vogue editor Michel de Brunoff, who became a key supporter, was quickly won over, and published the images.
The following year Saint Laurent won three of the four categories in a design competition in Paris - the fourth went to his contemporary Karl Lagerfeld, now at Chanel.
De Brunoff advised Christian Dior to hire him and he rapidly became heir apparent to the great couturier, taking over the house when Dior died suddenly three years later.
Saint Laurent's success lay in the harmony he achieved between body and garment - what he called ‘the total silence of clothing.’
He was also in the right place at the right time. He founded his own couture house at the start of the 1960s, at a time when the world was changing and there was a new appetite for originality.
His name and the familiar YSL logo became synonymous with all the latest trends, highlighted by the creation of the Rive Gauche ready-to-wear label and perfume, as well as astute licensing deals for accessories and perfumes.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he set the pace for fashion around the world, opening up the Japanese market and subsequently expanding to South Korea and Taiwan.
But Saint Laurent's career was not without controversy. In 1971, a collection modelled on the styles of World War II Paris was slammed by some American critics, and his launch in the mid 1970s of a perfume called ‘Opium’ brought accusations that he was condoning drug use.
In his later years the depression that had haunted him all his life became more oppressive.
