Yves Saint Laurent’s life tied with Morocco closer than we used to think, the great French couturier found this place as a source of the pure inspiration. For Marrakesh, the opening of the fashion designer Museum is a great honour.
In October, the first visitors of Laurent’s museum will be able to appreciate a new place, which was established with the financial assistance of the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation.
New Marrakech museum of 4,000 sq.meters will be the permanent exhibition space displaying Yves’s work. The building also has the room for temporary exhibitions, a 130-seat auditorium, a café-restaurant, a bookshop and a research library. In other words, it is not a museum itself but entire cultural centre, which tells the story of the greatest persons in the world fashion industry.
The 5,000 books in the library will cover topics including Arabic and Andalusian history, botany, history of fashion and poetry.The museum will be situated opposite the designer’s Majorelle Gardens, which along with the Berber museum draws approximately 700,000 visitors each year.
Yves Saint Laurent Museums in Paris and Marrakesh
President of the foundation and Laurent’s life partner, Pierre Bergé, explained the decision to open museums in both Marrakech and Paris was natural and obvious.
“Marrakech taught me colour,”
said Yves Saint Laurent.
A museum dedicated to the designer will also be opened in Paris in October, at historical couture house, 5 Avenue Marceau. Currently the site of the foundation, the building was also where Yves Saint Laurent himself worked between 1974 and 2002.
Pierre Bergé noted:
“When Yves Saint Laurent discovered Marrakech in 1966, he was so moved by the place that he decided to buy a house and regularly go back there. It feels perfectly natural, fifty years later, to build a museum dedicated to his oeuvre, which was so inspired by this country. As for Paris, who needs to specify that it is where Yves Saint Laurent created all his work and built his career?”
