The secretive fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent suffered from chronic, acute depression, and turned to alcohol, amphetamines and cocaine, according to a new biography.
Saint Laurent: Bad Boy, to be published this week, throws an unflattering light on his private life, detailing homosexual relationships, the apparently tyrannical way in which he treated his entourage, and bouts of drunkenness during which he would throw ashtrays at his closest friends.
During a career spanning four decades, Saint Laurent dressed the Duchess of Windsor, Catherine Deneuve and Lauren Bacall. He died in June 2008 at 71, after shunning the limelight for several years.
Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, a biographer of the singer Serge Gainsbourg and the writer Françoise Sagan, writes in her book that Saint Laurent, who created his fashion house in 1961, suffered from depression from the mid-1970s on. He was "devoured by anxiety" and lashed out at staff, especially when he was drunk, she writes.
"Several times, witnesses saw him lose his head and throw objects at people. His physical power was as great as his inner strength. Yves was an athlete as far as ashtraythrowing is concerned," the biography says. "Amphetamines, drugs and alcohol started to create irreversible damage to Yves's psyche."
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It also claims he took cocaine in the hope it would help him stay at the top of the fashion industry despite his condition.
Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent's life-time business partner and companion, is said to have told one model: "Yves had started living a life of self-destruction and I didn't want to see it."
According to Lelièvre, Saint Laurent's sexuality may have been at the root of his depression. He grew up in Algeria, the son of French settlers. "He had relationships with Arab boys in Algeria. People laughed at him at school, he was called a poof. His homosexuality made him suffer," Lelièvre told the Journal du Dimanche.
He had such difficulty accepting his homosexuality that he asked a star model to sleep with him. Aged 50, Lelièvre writes, "exhausted both physically and psychologically", he asked his father: "Perhaps you would have preferred a real boy?"
Bergé refused to be a source for the book, which is based on interviews with more than 50 relatives, employees, doctors and models. He is described as "a remedy and a poison" for Saint Laurent, who "chose as his partner a man who compensated for his weaknesses. In making himself indispensable, Bergé robbed Saint Laurent of his autonomy. He turned him into an assisted diva". Lelièvre adds that Bergé nevertheless saved the designer's career.
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Saint Laurent's weakness did not stop him acting the tyrant with and manipulating his entourage. "People worked for him till the end, without worrying about overtime. When the fashion house closed, they got nothing in return. Saint Laurent took, but he didn't give."
Bergé refused to talk to the author because he did not want to endorse "a jumble of poorly verified gossip", adding that he had yet to read the biography.