“Photography gave me happiness. It’s a chance to talk to anybody, to travel, to meet different people. Photography opens so many doors.”
~ Sabine Weiss
(1924-2021)
Sabine is one of my favorite photographers. Here is a rare gem from her archive. Yves St Laurent was the boy wonder of French fashion and was hand-picked by Christian Dior to be his successor at his own illustrious House of Fashion.
Life Magazine asked Sabine to shoot his first fashion collection for Spring/Summer 1958. It seems from another era but still evokes all the elegance and beauty we associate with Haute Couture. Sabine already knew Dior well because early on in her career she was an assistant of Willy Maywald between 1946-1949 and was there in 1947 when Dior presented his first fashion collection in Paris.I can only imagine that this was not an easy shoot to position and coordinate 13 house models.YSL looks so young. He was only 21 years old at the time, he carried on the Dior tradition but made it his own. His big breakthrough that year was his version of the waistless dress, the trapeze line based on the flaring shape of a trapezoid and standing jauntily away from the body.
As he wisely said, “Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.”
