This amazingly candid documentary reveals the designer in a terrible decline as he rules his studio like a latter-day Sun King
Most
fashion documentaries are pretty sycophantic. Not this one. The long-delayed release of Olivier Meyrou’s Yves Saint Laurent: The Last Collections – alternatively (and ironically) titled Celebration – gives us an amazingly candid and rather shocking study of the legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, and his apparent physical and mental deterioration at the age of 60, as he was preparing his final show in 1999 as an independent designer in the old style, before selling the YSL brand to Gucci.
The film was originally shown in 2007, but then withdrawn under legal pressure from Saint Laurent’s business and personal partner Pierre Bergé, who emerges from the film as callous, cynical, manipulative and cruel, calling Saint Laurent a “sleepwalker” who depends on his “anxieties”. Bergé is shown all but mocking what appears to be Saint Laurent’s incipient dementia as he appears not to recognise his niece at a reception.