THE fashion house set up in 1961 by Yves Saint Laurent closed yesterday, removing a further stitch from the fraying garment that is Parisian haute couture.

Saint Laurent had announced his retirement earlier this year, prompting the 158 employees to appeal for another designer to be appointed in his place, but they were rebuffed by the managers who declared that he was irreplaceable. The final garment, an embroidered jacket for the French actress Catherine Deneuve, was completed last week.

“I feel immense sadness,” said Saint Laurent. “We are putting an end to a 40-year-old love story.”

The French capital now has just 11 maisons de haute couture compared with 20 a decade ago.

Pierre Bergé, the chairman of the fashion house, said: “Let’s not kid ourselves — haute couture is finished and it is better to get out before it disappears completely.”

Fashion experts say that it is increasingly difficult to find customers who are prepared to pay about £30,000 for a made-to-measure garment.

Yves Saint Laurent Haute Couture, for instance, had only about 120 regular customers, and although they included Bernadette Chirac, the wife of the President, it was losing about £6.5 million a year. Today fashion houses make money from selling accessories such as perfumes, or upmarket, off-the-peg collections.

For the seamstresses in Saint Laurent’s studios, the closure is likely to mean a painful transition to work in the prêt-à-porter industry.

“Here, we are responsible for making a garment from start to finish,” said Lydie Rousseau, who specialises in chiffon dresses. “But in prêt-à-porter it is like an assembly line.”

Many of the employees have been at Yves Saint Laurent for 20 years or more, and are deeply attached to the firm. “When you see a fashion show on the television and you see one of the dresses that you have made, it’s fantastic,” said Mme Rousseau.

Christelle Coudert, another of the seamstresses, said: “The first time I saw one of my hemlines at a fashion show, I had tears in my eyes.”

Dummies of some of the firm’s best customers, among them Ariane de Rothschild, who married into the Rothschild banking dynasty, and Princess Firyal of Jordan, will now be discarded.

About 30 seamstresses have found work with other fashion houses, and 24 have taken early retirement. The rest will be given “generous” redundancy packages.

“I have always been a left-wing boss and I’m not going to start behaving like a right-wing boss now,” Bergé said. “No one will be hard done by.”

End of the line



As Yves Saint Laurent’s workshop closed, his portrait was covered by a note to staff from his business partner, Pierre Bergé: “You will not be surprised that I am addressing you today. We have just been through difficult months and you know that I have always been at your side, as I will be until the closure of our house. The words that spring to my mind are those of gratitude and affection — I think also of those people who were here at the start of this beautiful adventure 40 years ago. It is easy to understand that I should have a special thought for M Saint Laurent, and that I should tell him how proud we are to have worked at his side. I want all of you to know that I am profoundly attached to you and I wish you a good holiday.”

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