Pantsuit

Yves Saint Laurent|Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche|Yves Saint Laurent

ca. 1969 · cotton · Costume Institute

Yves Saint Laurent's Rive Gauche line for women debuted in 1966. In promoting ready-to-wear clothing, Saint Laurent successfully outfitted a new group of consumers with his designs. One of his successful looks for Rive Gauche was the "safari" jacket, a feminine version of what a big-game hunter might wear while traveling in Africa. In this example, Saint Laurent paired the jacket with trousers to create one of the pantsuits he regularly offered for women's wear. He also used a dyed textile that resembled handmade tie-dyed garments of the 1960s, which illustrates how counter-culture styles influenced mainstream fashion from established design houses during this period, a reversal of previous norms.

Artist

Yves Saint Laurent|Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche|Yves Saint Laurent

Date

ca. 1969

Medium

cotton

Culture

French

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Kay Kerr Uebel, 1987