By Angelina Harrison
Yves Saint Laurent, born August 1, 1936, was named Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint Laurent. As a child, Saint Laurent dressed in a way that appeared to be homosexual to his schoolmates. Due to this, he was often bullied in school. Consequently, he was a nervous child who was sick almost every day. He found comfort in art, specifically fashion. He liked to create paper dolls that were intricately designed. When he was a teenager, he designed dresses for his mother and sisters. Once he was seventeen, his mother took him to Paris for an arranged marriage with Michel de Brunhoff, the editor of French Vogue. Brunhoff was impressed with his drawings. He showed these drawings to Christian Dior. Christian Dior hired seventeen-year-old Yves Saint Laurent to be his assistant. Once Dior died, Saint Laurent was named head for the House of Dior. During this, he experimented with different skirt sizes. In 1960, he was drafted into the French army. He got replaced at the House of Dior. In 1962 he opened his own fashion house. His new house helped him emerge as one of the most influential designers in Paris. He made pants for women in the city and country popular. The Metropolitan Museum of Art held an exhibit of Saint Laurent’s designs in 1983. For one billion dollars in 1999, he sold his ready to-wear business to Gucci. In 2002 he retired his couture house. The Legion of Honor made Saint Laurent a grand officer in 2007. Yves Saint Laurent died at age seventy-one on June 1, 2008.
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