Devoting an extra special exhibition to revered fashion icon and muse, Betty Catroux, French fashion house, Yves Saint Laurent honors her time as a model and her contributions to the Fondation Pierre Bergé at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Paris.
Featuring a meticulously curated personal collection of Betty Catroux’s most distinctive clothing, the exhibit will showcase over 180 haute couture pieces. Hand selected by artistic director and exhibit carte blanche, Anthony Vaccarello, the collection will include runway prototypes and 138 one-off pieces from the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche ready-to-wear line.
As the foundation’s most significant donor, the exhibition which aims to best reflect Catroux’s close relationship with late founder and designer, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent by displaying pieces which best reflect her unique personality and ongoing influence over the label’s signature style.
Lionized as the perfect embodiment of the Yves Saint Laurent brand, Betty Catroux is known for being mysteriously alluring with an elusively desirable charm – making her designer Yves Saint Laurent’s physical ideal with an attitude which echoed the innovative ‘masculine feminine style’ that he was developing when they first met at the nightclub The New Jimmy’s in 1967. Inspired by her radically androgynous look, the exhibit will showcase approximately fifty designs, from that period of time which are intrinsically linked to the figure of Betty Catroux – Yves’ ‘female double’.
Adapting pieces from the male wardrobe for the female body, the exhibition will recount the full history of the signature ‘Saint Laurent style,’ which gained prominence in the 1960s before the couture house’s final closure during a press conference on January 7th, 2002.
Ceasing his career as a couturier, the French designer went on to establish the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, within the same year. The foundation which aims to conserve and promote the full Yves Saint Laurent oeuvre, maintains an archive of over 34,000 items related to the life and work of the esteemed designer and his haute couture house. Since its opening in 2017, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris has permanently held an ever-changing rotation of retrospective displays and temporary thematic exhibitions in honor of the Fondation’s rich and unique collection.
The exhibition will thus be open to public from March 3 to October 11, at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris on 5th avenue Marceau.