Fragrance house

Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé founded the house in Paris in 1961. The house presented its first collection on January 29, 1962, and in 1966 introduced Rive Gauche, a luxury ready-to-wear line created with the ambition of haute couture. Its creative identity is associated with liberating women through menswear-derived forms such as le smoking and the saharienne, and with a Parisian Left Bank orientation. Gucci Group acquired the Saint Laurent house in 1999. Yves Saint Laurent retired in January 2002, and the haute couture arm closed that October, leaving the brand focused on ready-to-wear. In 2008, YSL Beauté was sold to L’Oréal, separating the beauty and fragrance business from the fashion house, which remains part of Kering. Hedi Slimane’s 2012 appointment brought a rebranding to the simpler name Saint Laurent, while Anthony Vaccarello, creative director from 2016, has shaped the label through modernity, mixed genres, and a cinematic approach. In 2023, Saint Laurent and Vaccarello launched Saint Laurent Productions. The fragrance house began with Y in 1964; Opium, launched in 1977, became a major commercial success and remained among France’s top-ten best-selling perfumes decades later.