Two new books offer intimate look at icons of fashion, including Marc Jacobs and Alexander McQueen.
‘Yves Saint Laurent’
By Pierre Berge
(Abrams, $35)
Like snooping through Yves Saint Laurent’s attic, this new journal unearths snapshots and memories from the iconic designer’s frequent sojourns in Morocco. From villas owned over the years in Marrakech, Saint Laurent designed his haute couture collections. He also recharged and reveled with luminaries such as Catherine Deneuve, Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol — and, of course, Pierre Berge, his lifelong partner.
Berge plays historian and guide in this book. Context for the photos is recaptured and reprinted in his handwriting, accentuating the intimacy of a shirtless Saint Laurent on their patio and the sensuality of a rooftop portrait of American transplants Paul and Talitha Getty. Those newlyweds entertained often at the Moroccan palace they bought, importing American decorator Bill Willis to update it with pan-Arabic flair that would become his signature.
In Marrakech, Saint Laurent nurtured his closest confidences, including with model and muse Betty Catroux and husband Francois, and with Fernando Sanchez, a fellow designer based in New York. Saint Laurent met him at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture in France. Loulou de la Falaise was a frequent guest. Berge recalls how she “seduced Yves with her eccentricity and audacity.” She served as his assistant for more than 30 years, designing jewelry and hats for his collections.
Constantly drawing in the shade of palm trees, Saint Laurent, born in neighboring Algeria, was inspired by the souks, gardens, snake charmers and acrobats that surrounded him in Marrakech. His Orientalist reimaginings produced some of the most acclaimed fashion collections of his career.
Starting in 1999, Saint Laurent and Berge spent summers in seaside Tangier, in a home that clung to the cliffs, Berge writes in his evocative prose.
The introduction to the book recalls the first trip on which Berge accompanied Saint Laurent to Marrakech. After a week of torrential rain, the clouds parted, the Moroccan sun probed “every recess … the snow-capped Atlas Mountains blocked the horizon, and the perfume of jasmine rose to our room.”
It is easy to see why they fell instantly in love with this place; by the end of this volume, you might too.
‘Champagne Supernovas’
By Maureen Callahan
(Touchstone, $26)
The ’90s don’t seem so far removed — or remarkable — to casual fashion observers, who associate the decade with Calvin Klein minimalism and Nirvana grunge.
But author Maureen Callahan proves, in a biography as dramatic and addictive as “Game of Thrones,” that the decade represents a revolution not just in fashion, but also the broader ideals of beauty. This was the period in which designers Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs ripped apart the overstuffed fabric of high fashion, and the jagged-toothed, crooked-legged model Kate Moss stole the show from glamazonians such as Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista.
It didn’t happen overnight. In the early part of the decade, Jacobs was fired by Perry Ellis for his iconoclastic grunge collection. The scrawny Moss, as the new face of Calvin Klein, was derided for glorifying anorexia and heroin. McQueen, a high school dropout living on British welfare, was turned down for jobs at Alberta Ferretti and Jil Sander.
By the mid-’90s, their aesthetic of subversion was trickling up. Louis Vuitton sought Jacobs to reinvent the luxury house. Moss’ off-center gaze fronted every magazine. McQueen’s brocade and Union Jack coats were taking center stage on David Bowie’s tours and albums.
Alternative was officially mainstream.
A former editor and writer at New York magazine, Spin and the New York Post, Callahan crafts an intoxicating brew of scholarly rigor, dishy anecdotes and wicked commentary. After John Galliano chose Moss to open his show for the spring 1990 collection, she drank so much whiskey at the after-party that she missed her flight the next day. “She was hungover and disoriented and intimidated,” Callahan writes, “and she loved it.”
Callahan’s interviews with friends, family and influencers back up her depiction of each of her three antagonists as an extraordinary talent with a troubled soul — hence the title, borrowed from the British band Oasis.
Twitter: @wendy_donahue