_How the new Musée Yves Saint Laurent is celebrating the designer’s life work

Yves Saint Laurent first travelled to Marrakesh in 1966 with his business partner Pierre Bergé. He was instantly taken with the place and even bought a house there. For the remainder of the French designer’s life, he would have a strong connection with the city.

Notably, on 1 December and 1 June of each year, Saint Laurent would travel to Marrakesh for a fortnight to design his haute couture collections. ‘In Morocco, I realised that the range of colours I use was that of the zelliges, zouacs, djellabas and caftans,’ said Saint Laurent.

‘The boldness seen since then in my work, I owe to this country, to its forceful harmonies, to its audacious combinations, to the fervour of its creativity.This culture became mine, but I wasn’t satisfied with absorbing it; I took, transformed and adapted it.’

^{Above: Yves Saint Laurent first visited Marrakesh in 1966}

For over 40 years, Yves Saint Laurent, who was born in Algeria and left for Paris as a teenager, was quite simply a fashion megastar. He became known for helping to revive couture and promoting the idea of ready-to-wear, and is considered one of the most influential fashion designers of all time.

He is remembered for his creativity and championing of a number of particular styles for women – the pea-coat, trench-coat, trouser suit and safari jacket among them. His evening dresses were theatrical and suggested a creator who loved culture, theatre, art, and fashion; and significantly, that included non-European culture.

But perhaps his most famous creation was the tuxedo outfit for women called Le Smoking. Introduced in 1966, it was immortalised in a photograph by Helmut Newton for French Vogue in 1975, in which a female model with short, slicked-back hair wears a tuxedo suit with jacket and trousers, white shirt and cravat, cigarette in hand, in a back street at night.

The setting – Rue Aubriot in Le Marais, the Parisian district Newton had been living in for years – gives the picture an almost documentary feel. The image hangs on the wall of the Marrakesh museum, along with many other photographs of the designer’s work and Saint Laurent himself.

^{Above: The exhibition includes drawings and paintings charting YSL's history}

This elegant, feminine evening suit for women caused quite a stir, and the celebrity style-setters of the time, such women as Bianca Jagger, Lauren Bacall, Liza Minnelli and Saint Laurent’s muse, Loulou de la Falaise, all wore Le Smoking.

It was controversial: in 1968, New York City socialite Nan Kempner was refused entry to La Côte Basque brasserie because she was wearing it. The problem was the trousers, which she then removed to dine in the jacket alone, now a type of mini-dress.

It is said that the first customer for the Le Smoking suit was actress Catherine Deneuve. Interestingly, the last one ever made was bought by the wife of British designer Paul Smith. Smith – who along with his wife Pauline, a former fashion tutor and designer, used to go to the couture shows in Paris – was a big fan of Saint Laurent and, in particular, of Le Smoking.

‘When I first saw an Yves Saint Laurent smoking suit I really thought it was the sexiest thing I had ever seen,’ he says. A lifelong admirer of the French designer, Smith is today well-known for making tailored suits for women as well as for men. ‘When you hold [the YSL Le Smoking jacket] it feels incredible; it has such weight. That’s what gives it the elegant drape.’

Saint Laurent died in 2008, but he was survived by Bergé who created a foundation in their joint names and saw to it that last year (the year in which he died) a museum opened, dedicated to the designer’s memory in the city that became his second home.

‘When Yves Saint Laurent first visited Marrakesh in 1966, he was so moved by the city that he immediately decided to buy a house here, and returned regularly. It feels perfectly natural, 50 years later, to build a museum dedicated to his oeuvre, which was so inspired this country,’ said Bergé.

The museum is just down the road from the spectacular tropical Jardin Majorelle, created by painter and fellow Frenchman Jacques Majorelle and a favourite haunt of Saint Laurent’s. The designer and his partner Bergé acquired the garden in 1980 to save it from property developers.

They restored it, and when Saint Laurent died, his ashes were scattered among the cacti, lily ponds and palms, as were Bergé’s last year.

^{Above: The building was designed by architects Studio KO}

Now the garden has a neighbour in the form of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent, a new 4,000-square-metre building designed by the architects Studio KO. The façade of this striking, modern, geometric construction has a covering of red bricks that is lace-like and makes patterns that recall the warp and weft of fabric.

The project was directed by Bergé, who came to the site each month and fortunately lived to see the finished exterior. The idea is that, like the lining of a couture jacket, the interior offers a contrast to the outward appearance of the museum.

Here, traditional Moroccan materials are given a contemporary treatment – local brick, black granite, laurel branches, brass and oak. Bergé was keen on Moroccanstyle stained glass and the use of terrazzo in many colours.

As well as the large, 400-square-metre permanent exhibition space given to the fashion of Saint Laurent, designed by scenographer Christophe Martin, the building also acts as a storage facility to conserve 1,000 couture garments and accessories created by the house, part of the collection of the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.

There is also a temporary exhibition space which is showing the sculpted dresses of Moroccan fashion designer Noureddine Amir until 22 April. In addition, visitors can access a research library containing over 6,000 volumes, a 150-seat auditorium, a bookstore and a terrace café.

Already, this oasis of Parisian high-fashion has become a must on the itinerary of anyone visiting this famous North African city. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakesh, at Rue Yves St Laurent, Marrakesh 40000, Morocco, opened three weeks after the inauguration of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, which is located at the former fashion house of Yves Saint Laurent at 5 Avenue Marceau, 75116

museeyslmarrakesh.com; museeyslparis.com