Old News: Yves Saint Laurent

PHOTO BY FRANCESCO SCAVULLO

In Old News, we highlight a piece from Interview‘s past that resonates with the present.

Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent would have celebrated his 74th birthday this Monday, August 1. To celebrate YSL’s life and legacy, Interview has gone back—way back—into our archives to January 1973, when the magazine first featured Christian Dior’s onetime protege.

At the time, Saint Laurent was a charter member of Paris’s jet set, a fixture at Studio 54, and a friend to Andy Warhol; the next year, Warhol would immortalize the designer with one of his signature silkscreens. In a freewheeling conversation, YSL spoke with Interview regular Bianca Jagger about beauty, pornography, and why he “adore[d] clothes, but hate[d] fashion.” Their discussion is reprinted below.

BIANCA JAGGER: What is on our mind, Yves?

YVES SAINT LAURENT: Many things…

JAGGER: Always pretty.

SAINT LAURENT: I can’t say.

JAGGER: Do you think you can speak in front of this machine? It’s not really the right time.

SAINT LAURENT: [In English] I would like to be sit…

JAGGER: [In English] There—Voila, that’s a perfect place. Monsieur Saint Laurent… (She laughs.)

SAINT LAURENT: Mrs. J. [They both laugh]

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW.