PARIS — Of all the legends related to the house of Yves Saint Laurent, none perhaps is more evocative of the atmosphere of its piquant times than the tale of Nan Kempner dropping her trousers at La Côte Basque in 1968.
That a maître d’ would tell a woman she couldn’t dine in couture pants — and that Kempner would surreptitiously shed her satin trousers to enter barely concealed in a YSL smoking tunic — shows how many dos and don’ts have flown out the window over the last 40 years.
But as much as things have changed, many have stayed the same. At least when it comes to great-looking clothes, which seems to be the point of the latest paean to Kempner’s style (after last year’s exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute) at the Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent foundation here. The show runs through July 29.
“Nan didn’t have any complexes,” chuckled Saint Laurent last week as he examined the last bits of the exhibit’s installation, made up of 75 emblematic ensembles Kempner ordered from the house.
“When she dropped her trousers, she told me that story,” continued the designer. “It made me laugh. She was very amusing.”
Looking lively but moving with difficulty, Saint Laurent, dressed in a grey pinstriped suit and blue tie, ambled about the exhibit and remembered his long friendship with the legendary clotheshorse. He recounted how Kempner, who died in 2005, attended her first YSL show in 1964. She came to every show after that, except one in 1993, until Saint Laurent retired in 2002.
“I was stunned by her instantly,” said Saint Laurent. “She was natural, she had a typical American beauty that was world’s apart from those other New York women of the time.
“She had incredible eyes, this extraordinary allure,” he enthused. “Her silhouette was marvelous and she had this abundant youth. It made the other women in New York that everyone had thought chic look démodé.”
He added, “She was one of the last modern personalities produced by America.”
Kempner loved Saint Laurent equally. All told, she ordered 374 outfits from the couturier during her life. Part of the exhibit, which is a suite of two rooms with white mannequins in Kempner’s clothes, is a wall of original sketches and fabric swatches illustrating each of those garments.
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“Nan loved dresses,” said Saint Laurent. “The day after every show, she was the first client to arrive at the house [to place orders]. She was there at 9:30 [a.m.] sharp.”
But it wasn’t only Kempner’s enthusiasm that impressed Saint Laurent. “She always picked the most beautiful pieces,” he said. “She bought pieces separately that she would wear with jeans or trousers. She invented her own wardrobe. That’s why she was modern. She had her own point of view.”
Indeed, the exhibit, which opens with a black velour dress edged with feathers, communicates Kempner’s love of a variety of silhouettes and styles, from a boxy 1966 Mod-style jersey skirt suit to a form-fitting sexy gray taffeta cocktail dress from 1981. Equally telling of her flair is a jersey jumpsuit in prune from 1969, a colorful hippy deluxe patchwork skirt of the same year and an evening gown with a black transparent bustier from 2000.
“She was a great friend,” said Saint Laurent, suppressing a tear. “We had a strong sentimental link. She inspired me a lot. I thought of her often when I designed.”
Since he retired five years ago, Saint Laurent said he hasn’t regretted one iota abandoning fashion, especially as so many of his cherished clients, such as Kempner, have disappeared.
“It was the right idea to close,” he said. “Fashion is no longer the same. It’s finished. There’s a lack of refinement and execution. Today anything flies. There’s so much vulgarity. I never look at the magazines. It’s just too ugly.”
Nonetheless, he said surveying his own work, as the exhibit forced him to do, didn’t elicit painful nostalgia.
“It’s not difficult for me to see these clothes from the past,” he said. “On the contrary, it gives me enthusiasm. The exhibit’s very lively. I think it expresses [Kempner’s] personality. Especially her way of mixing. We mixed everything as she did. It’s not set up chronologically by season, but all together, from across the years.”
Meanwhile, he admitted his health has been up and down recently, with a minor improvement in the last few months.
“I’m not so bad these days,” he said, adding he was planning a trip later this month to the home he keeps in Marrakech, Morocco.
“I haven’t been in a long time,” he said. “But I’m redoing the carpeting at home in Paris. I’m changing everything.”
Later this summer, Saint Laurent said he would travel to his and Bergé’s residence in Tangiers, Morocco.
“Since I stopped, everything has disappeared from my head,” he offered. “Maybe it will come back. But for the moment, there’s a huge hole.”