Source: WWD
Sources told WWD that Saint Laurent has leased the building at 30 rue Spentini in Paris, where the legendary designer’s original haute couture house was located. It was unclear what the Kering-owned fashion house plans to do with the historic venue, and Saint Laurent could not be reached for comment.
On November 22, 1961, the news that Yves Saint Laurent moved to Spentini Street became the front page news of “Women’s Wear Daily”. The article described “the house once belonged to the famous French cartoonist Jean-Louis Forain died in the year.”
It also noted that renovations were needed ahead of the couturier’s first presentation on January 29, 1962.
Princess Anne, Baroness Rothschild, Roland Petit, Zizi Jean-Mail, Geneviève Fath and Françoise Sagan, among others, witnessed the first haute couture collection of Yves Saint Laurent, who previously served as Christian Dior’s The successor has been acclaimed at the House of Dior.
Rue Spontini has been synonymous with Yves Saint Laurent’s couture business for more than a decade, even as he ventures further into ready-to-wear with the opening of the Rive Gauche boutique.
There he met French actress Catherine Deneuve for the first time. “I showed up at Rue Spentini with a picture from the previous year’s Russian collection, and he agreed to make it for me,” Deneuve later recalled, and the suit sparked a “long professional collaboration and friendship.”
In 1974, Yves Saint Laurent and his business partner Pierre Bergé moved couture from Rue Spontini to a hôtel boutique at 5 Avenue Marceau that dates back to the Second Empire.
Yves Saint Laurent retired and closed the haute couture house in 2002, when the building on the Avenue Marceau was reconfigured as the Pierre Foundation Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent. Since 2017, it has been home to the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris.