He and Pierre Bergé, his accomplice in life and enterprise, promptly purchased a home there, Dar el Hanch (the Home of the Serpents), earlier than buying two different villas, Dar es Saada and La Villa Oasis.
“I feel Marrakech turned Saint Laurent’s secret backyard, or an adored reflection of the misplaced world of his childhood, as a result of he was born in Algeria and grew up there when the nation was nonetheless a French colony,” says Björn Dahlström, director of Marrakech’s new Musée Yves Saint Laurent, which opened final week.
Bergé — who died only a few weeks earlier than its debut — spearheaded the venture, tapping Paris-based architects Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty (of Studio KO) to design the brand new 46,000-square-foot house. Its placing red-brick and pink-stone edifice stands adjoining to the Jardin Majorelle, a beloved 2 1/2-acre botanical backyard that Saint Laurent (who died in 2008) and Bergé restored.
The museum shows a choice of greater than 5,000 gadgets of clothes, 15,000 high fashion equipment and tens of 1000’s of sketches and artwork objects from the YSL archives. (The model additionally launched a sister museum in Paris earlier this month.) The everlasting assortment in Marrakech consists of 50 YSL high fashion items, organized round themes that recurred within the designer’s work: masculine-feminine, black, Africa and Morocco, imaginary voyages, gardens, and Artwork Deco. The museum additionally homes a library, bookstore, restaurant and a number of short-term reveals.
A quote from Saint Laurent welcomes guests: “Marrakech launched me to paint . . . though I used to be used to the sunshine and the colours of North Africa, it was solely later, once I found Morocco, that I understood my colours had been these of zellige mosaics, zouacs, djellabas and caftans. For no matter daring issues I’ve finished since then, I’m indebted to the nation, to the violence of its harmonies, the insolence of its mixtures, the depth of its innovations.”
