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Yves SAINT-LAURENT

Lettre autographe signée à Hélène Rochas : "[...] c'est une vie de fou qui dévore tout."

Paris 29 février 1984, 21x29,7cm, une feuille.

Signed handwritten letter to Hélène Rochas: “It's a crazy life that devours everything.”

Handwritten letter signed by the fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent addressed to Hélène Rochas. 38 lines written in black marker, envelope attached.
A moving and previously unseen letter from the fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, declaring his deep friendship for Hélène Rochas, Parisian beauty icon and superb business woman, who for 50 years ran the fashion and perfume label founded by her husband Marcel Rochas.
This letter from Yves Saint-Laurent is a beautiful and extremely rare declaration of friendship for Hélène Rochas, whom he considered to be one of his close friends for many years. In 1984, the fashion designer was at the height of his glory, becoming the first fashion designer to be the subject of a retrospective during his lifetime thanks to the exhibition held at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art the previous year. As for the recipient of the letter, Hélène Rochas skilfully manages her perfume house, which, under her direction, becomes a real industrial empire having international success with her creations “Madame Rochas” and “Eau de Rochas.” She established herself as an informal muse for her friend's brand, an influential ambassador of the Yves Saint-Laurent fashion house, to which she will always remain faithful. The fashion designer contributed largely to creating her image as a “socialite” and dressed her for the sumptuous balls she threw at the Grande Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne in 1965, as well as the Monte-Carlo Centenary Ball in 1966, organised at the request of Prince Rainier III. In return, Hélène Rochas knew how to choose the Yves Saint-Laurent ready-to-wear collection masterpieces: suits, fur coats, Slave-inspired dresses that remained legendary in fashion history. At this time, they are both at the head of a successful perfume line, since the launch of Yves Saint-Laurent perfumes in 1971, and they also share a love of the Parisian Rive Gauche. Saint-Germain-des-Prés, were they both lived for more than forty years, served as an inspiration for the famous ready-to-wear collection “Rive Gauche” by Yves Saint-Laurent and was the scene of memorable parties held in Hélène Rochas's apartment on Rue Barbey de Jouy, attended by Aragon, Paul Éluard, Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault, Marie-Louise Bousquet, director of Harper's Bazaar, Viscountess Marie-Laure de Noailles, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst and Man Ray. For almost half a century, Yves Saint Laurent and Hélène Rochas embodied the golden age of Parisian luxury, and their friendship lasted until the fashion designer's death in 2008.
The tone of the letter is resolutely dark, although it shows a real attachment for his long-standing friend. Part way between dejection and the memory of happy times spent in her company, the fashion designer declares to Hélène Rochas: “The only thing that matters to me is you and I and that hasn't changed. You are always the sincere and marvellous friend that I miss. You represent the last years of happiness that I had.” The letter shows a sensitivity and an absolute sincerity, and reveals a surprisingly flamboyant epistolary style, as already noted by Diana Vreeland, official of the Yves Saint-Laurent retrospective at the MET: “He has a way of opening up in his writing. [...] and it's such a contrast. When he talks you see, it's very simple, it's very concentrated. But when he writes, he really gallops through the words!” Paloma Picasso describes him as “absolutist in friendship and in his passions,” a genius relying on a circle of close friends, who for him were a precious reassurance and a rare source of joy.
Yet the letter plunges the reader into a turbulent intimacy – the success of the fashion designer and his impressive productivity hide a dark reality, a constant suffering, which he confesses to his friend in a few lines: “I'm sad not to see you so much I am tired [...] but don't think that this is permanent. I'm going through a very bad health patch and it's getting better. It's not forever.” We find him exhausted from his excessive lifestyle and relentless work, his four haute couture and ready-to-wear collections per year having caused serious damage to his physical and mental health. In order to solve his chronic overwork, he is retreating, like every year, to his Moroccan haven of peace: “I am leaving for Marrakesh for a short while because I have still had a ready-to-wear presentation in March. It's a crazy life that devours everything.” Yves Saint-Laurent will escape for a few days, before the show of his autumn-winter collection, to his famous “Villa Oasis,” a sanctuary of shimmering colours and the setting for a magnificent Islamic art collection, that he and Pierre Bergé have had for almost twenty years. His letter ends with his deeply overwhelming farewells: “Dearest Hélène, to the faithful and warm friend that you are, I embrace you will all of my heart and hold you in my arms.”
Vibrant testimony to an unfailing friendship, in the chaos of the fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent's life, which is confided in this letter to a friend whose eclecticism and curiosity made her an essential model of Parisian fashion.

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