Born August 1: Yves Saint Laurent

Are any three letters as elegant as YSL? When he was seventeen, Yves Saint Laurent began working for Christian Dior, who referred to him as his dauphin. When Dior died suddenly four years later, Saint Laurent was made head of the fashion house, but soon he was conscripted to serve in the Algerian war. Hazed by his rougher fellow soldiers, the fragile couture artiste lasted twenty days before he had a nervous breakdown. The army tried to cure him with electroshock therapy. When he returned to Dior, he found he had been replaced. He started his own house, giving rise to some of the most famous clothes in history: the Mondrian dress, "le Smoking," the tuxedo for women, the designer leather jacket, the sheath dress, the gold cape. For nearly twenty years he and his business manager Pierre Bergé were lovers, and, after they broke up they continued living together for another ten years. In 1983, Saint Laurent became the first living designer to be honored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a retrospective. In 1993, he and Bergé sold the company for $600 million. After his retirement in 2002, Saint Laurent spent much of his time in Marrakech, where he restored and opened to the public the vivid gardens originally designed by French expat Jacques Majorelle. He died in June 2008 (most newspapers degayed his obituary, calling Bergé, who announced his death, "a friend" or omitting him) and his ashes are interred in the garden. At his funeral in Paris, Catherine Deneuve read a poem by Walt Whitman. The Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, a powerhouse in aids research and funding, also operates his haute couture studio as a gallery showcasing fashion. Two great photo books are Yves Saint Laurent and Yves Saint Laurent: Style.