Yves Saint Laurent and Photography Explores an Enduring Legacy Through Archival Photography

Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent at Concarneau, 1967. Photography credit: © Pierre Bergé © Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent (page 8).

Yves Saint Laurent and Photography Explores an Enduring Legacy Through Archival Photographs

Created in collaboration with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, this large-format edition puts a definitive stamp on the designer’s enduring influence working with the leading photographers of the 20th century.

Writer Geoff Nudelman

For all that’s been written about Yves Saint Laurent, there always seems to be something new to be said.

That alone is a statement about the Algerian-born designer, whose brand still sits among the top in high fashion more than two decades since his death in 2001. The latest effort to tell the story of Saint Laurent and those three important initials comes to life through Yves Saint Laurent and Photography (Phaidon), a large-format photographic retrospective being released this September.

More than 150 pages, this book is a collaboration with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, opening up archival, never-before-seen photographs from Saint Laurent’s life. It will debut during the closing weeks of a larger exhibition during the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival in southern France from July 7 to October 5.

Peter Knapp. Elle, September 1965. Cocktail dresses from the fall-winter 1965 haute couture collection, also known as “Homage to Piet Mondrian.” Photography credit: © Yves Saint Laurent © Jeanne Lanvin-Castillo © Peter Knapp. (page 149, top right).

Yves Saint Laurent and Photography. Phaidon. With forewords by Madison Cox and Christoph Wiesner, and texts by Elsa Janssen, Simon Baker, Serena Bucalo-Mussely, Alice Morin, and Clémentine Cuinet. Photo: © David Bailey © Yves Saint Laurent © Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.

As a result, the book reads like a museum exhibition, largely following the chronology of Saint Laurent’s rise to influence after Christian Dior’s untimely death in 1957. There is an array of photographs from some of the most important photographers of the 20th century, including Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, and Guy Bourdin.

As the exhibition’s description explains, the collection is as much a walk through the history of 20th-century fashion as it is of YSL. “Photography was central to the Saint Laurent story,” museum curator Clémentine Cuinet writes, noting that at its peak, YSL featured multiple times a year on the cover of Vogue Paris, dominating the fashion conversation. (She adds that some of these designs and photographs were deemed so important, the French government bought a selection to add to its own archive in 2023.)

Guy Bourdin, designs from the 1976 fall/winter haute couture collection known as “Opéra-Ballets Russes,” Sheraton Hotel, published in Vogue Paris, September 1976. Photography credit: © The Guy Bourdin Estate 2025. By kind permission of the Louise Alexander Gallery © Fondation Pierre Bergé –Yves Saint Laurent (pages 76-77) © Yves Saint Laurent.

Yves Saint Laurent and Photography. Phaidon. With forewords by Madison Cox and Christoph Wiesner, and texts by Elsa Janssen, Simon Baker, Serena Bucalo-Mussely, Alice Morin, and Clémentine Cuinet. Photos: © Franco Rubartelli. By kind permission of Ira Stehmann Fine Art, Munich (left) © Helmut Newton Foundation/Trunk Archive (right) © Yves Saint Laurent © Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.

Yves Saint Laurent and Photography. Phaidon. With forewords by Madison Cox and Christoph Wiesner, and texts by Elsa Janssen, Simon Baker, Serena Bucalo-Mussely, Alice Morin, and Clémentine Cuinet. Photo: © Juergen Teller © Yves Saint Laurent © Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.

The book walks the reader through the life and influence of Saint Laurent using portraits and photographs as milestones to better understand some of his most enduring and influential designs. At times, we also get a glimpse of Saint Laurent at work at his desk or backstage with models before a runway show. As a whole, it feels complete and tasteful, tidily wrapped up with a broader chronology of the YSL brand at the end of the book.

While the book does not contain deep prose, that isn’t the point. The photographs here tell the story—one that shows the influence and prestige of a designer deeply committed to his work and a specific aesthetic from which he never strayed. It’s an important homage to many of these stalwart designs, where a throughline can be traced to the designs of today.

Yves Saint Laurent and Photography. Phaidon. With forewords by Madison Cox and Christoph Wiesner, and texts by Elsa Janssen, Simon Baker, Serena Bucalo-Mussely, Alice Morin, and Clémentine Cuinet.