The YSL Look

Yves Saint Laurent, the Paris fashion designer who died Sunday, June 1, 2008, at age 71, created instant classics that remain stylish decades later. His famous signature is seen here on a plaque outside his Paris design house. Keep clicking to see some of his designs over the years.

1958

French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent tries a hat on model Svetlana in his workshop in Paris, France, in 1958. He is working on his Dior New York collection with the help of his assistant Marguerite Carre. The dress with narrow shoulders and wide, swinging skirt is designed in the trapeze line, which Saint Laurent introduced in his first solo collection in February of that year.

1965

Models present dresses inspired by painter Piet Mondrian during Yves Saint Laurent's farewell show in 2002 at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. The Mondrian dresses were made in 1965.

1967

A model wears an African-style dress embroidered with wooden beads, pearls and sequins of turquoise, pink and black, created in 1967 by Yves Saint Laurent in New York. The designer reworked the rules of fashion by putting women into elegant pantsuits that came to define how modern women dressed.

1969

Yves Saint Laurent, center, poses with Betty Catroux, left, and Loulou de la Falaise outside his Rive Gauche boutique in London on Sept. 10, 1969. Saint Laurent and his two friends are wearing his new safari-style designs made of khaki cotton.

1983

Saint Laurent, center, is surrounded by some of his models, accepts the applause from the audience at the end of his 1984 spring ready-to-wear fashion show in Paris in the fall of 1983. The legendary designer was named head of the House of Dior at the age of 21 after Dior died suddenly in 1957.

1984

Designer Yves Saint Laurent, center, is surrounded by some of his models as he acknowledges applause from the audience following the presentation of his fall collection in Paris, July 25, 1984.

1997

A model wears Yves Saint Laurent's leopard-style raincoat from his 1998 fall-winter collection.

1997

Model Carla Bruni wears a Yves Saint Laurent evening gown from the 1998 spring-summer collection. Bruni is now married to French President Nicholas Sarkozy.

1997

Model Claudia Schiffer wears an Yves Saint Laurent wedding gown from his 1980 spring-summer collection.

1997

Model Katoucha Niane wears Yves Saint Laurent lam

2001

A fashion model wears a dress designed by Yves Saint Laurent for his 2002 collection in July 2001.

2002

A model parades down the catwalk during the final Yves Saint Laurent fashion show in Paris in January of 2002.

Saint Laurent revolutionized fashion for women, but some of his work met with resistance. There are famous stories of women wearing Saint Laurent pantsuits who were turned away from hotels and restaurants in London and New York. His rising star was eternalized in 1983, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted a show to his work -- the first ever to a living designer.

Yves Saint Laurent is shown with Paloma Picasso, left, the daughter of late artist Pablo Picasso, and French actress Catherine Deneuve, after the presentation of his Rive Gauche ready-to-wear collection in Paris on Nov. 1, 1971. Deneuve is among many celebrated women he clothed.

Yves Saint Laurent, right, laughs with actress-singer Barbra Streisand, holding her poodle Sadie, backstage at the Winter Garden Theater in New York, Nov. 12, 1965. Streisand was performing in the Broadway musical "Funny Girl."

French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, left, and American actress Shirley MacLaine are shown at a party held in his honor on Nov. 1, 1965, in Hollywood, Calif.

Yves Saint-Laurent is congratulated by French actress Catherine Deneuve, left, and Russian ballerina Maia Plissetskaia, after the presentation of his collection in Paris, Jan. 25, 1973.

Yves Saint Laurent, center, is congratulated by American actress Lauren Bacall, left, and her daughter, Leslie Bogart, July 29, 1968, after the presentation of Saint Laurent's fashion collection.