Yves Saint Laurent perfume house from the beginning and the obstacles to success

8 February 2023
nezar kamel
Yves Saint Laurent perfume house from the beginning and the obstacles to success

Yves Saint Laurent is a French fashion house founded by Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent, and the Yves Saint Laurent perfume house is abbreviated as YSL.

The beginning of the Yves Saint Laurent perfume house

Yves Saint Laurent's career in fashion began at the age of 17, when he worked as an assistant to Christian Dior. And after Dior's death four years later, Laurent was appointed President of the House of Dior at the age of just 21. And he was still a young man when the Algerian War of Independence broke out, so Laurent was drafted into the army in 1960 and lost his position at Dior.

Military service and despair over losing his design position led to a hospital stay. After a short period of recovery, Laurent started his own fashion company and became one of the most influential fashion and perfume designers of the 1960s and 1970s.

The beginning of the Yves Saint Laurent perfume house

The year 1962 saw the dawn of the Yves Saint Laura perfume house and its haute couture creations for the rich and famous. But clothes were never the only way Yves Saint Laurent wanted to dress women. In 1964 he created his first fragrance, Y, in collaboration with perfumer Jean Amic.

The fragrance he issued was an olfactory expression of the elegance and luxury of his haute couture. It is a perfume specially designed for the beautiful women who wear it. in its original packaging. The green chypre juice is housed in a bottle cut to reflect the silhouette of a woman's head and shoulders. The letter "Y" was cleverly placed to represent the neckline of her dress.

The most famous edition of the Yves Saint Laurent perfume house

The YSL line of perfumes was prolific, their first fragrance being Yves Saint Laurent Y (1964). While Opium was the most famous and best-selling fragrance, which won the award for Best New Perfume for Women at the prestigious UK Fragrance Foundation Awards - and since then. The fragrance has garnered countless 'collectors'. elated by the limited editions and 'new spins' on this smoldering scent.

The strangest and most daring Yves Saint Laurent perfume

In 1971. Yves Saint Laurent continued to create bolder fragrances when he launched his first fragrance for men, Pour Homme posing nude in the fragrance's advertising campaign, in a stark representation of Yves Saint Laurent's values of modernity and daring.

In the same year, the Yves Saint Laurent perfume house released a fragrance for the independent and free-spirited woman called Rive Gauche. At a time when fragrances were presented in classic feminine bottles, this one was the first to be launched packaged in a metal case and after all these years, it is still the only fragrance packaged in this way.

In conclusion, the career of the Yves Saint Laurent perfume house has been marked by continuous evolution, both in terms of its designs and its approach to fashion. Since his early days as a designer, Saint Laurent has always been pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo, with his innovative and boundless designs.