La Hommage for the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition in Paris. By my Archive on June 2nd '08

"Yves saint Laurent passed away.
And finally with his passing the last of the great names has gone.

May he rest in peace.

You have worked for a long time.
And you worked well.
You are the one who made me truly understand
what the ﾒElegance of Parisﾓ meant .
I thank you.

You shone.
You were the brightest star that ultimately burnt out in the end.

Those of us who are left behind should reveal our ugliness.ﾓ


He was precocious, too.

With his ingenious foresight, he charged through the world of fashion.
His legs, once so beautiful and slender tripped on unfamiliar ground.


No matter how much I try, I canﾕt like K.L.
Itﾕs not a matter of taste, I think.
I canﾕt help comparing him to Yves saint Laurent.
Why on earth did P. Berge, who had been dumped by Bernard Buffet, manage to find such a good-looking man of such caliber?
I read a book.
　
Cocteau said that Berge would come to visit him at a bankerﾕs holiday house in the South of France, where Cocteau was staying, along with his boyfriend. His boyfriend was once Bernard Buffet. But this time, Berge brought ﾒa young man too beautifulﾓ in place of Buffet.

I trust Bergerﾕs ability to understand beauty.
And I cannot like K.L. no matter what.
The difference is simply too big.


In the mid 50ﾕs when the world was recovering from of WWII,
This inconceivably beautiful man who was hiding his talent in his sleeve emerged in the city.
Equipped with the precociousness that stabs ﾒbeautyﾓ and ﾒfreedomﾓ with ﾒtalentﾓ, he met three men who he was destined to meet.
Michel de Brunoff, Christian Dior, and then later Pierre Berge




May, 1968.
There was a growing wave of revolution.
The events of 40 years ago are still connected to everything new in Paris and France.
It was not only a mere political phenomenon.
It changed the ﾒrelationalityﾓ of men and women, the way they lived, how they connected themselves to the society, their life styles, their morale, and fashion industry itself.
Yves Saint-Laurent Rive Gauche opened two years prior to these events on the left bank of the Seine.
Caught up in the maelstrom of May 68, the world turned to the culture movement.
The world of Paris fashion was released from the secluded upper class strictures and witnessed the birth of "ready-to-wear".
"Yves Saint-Laurent Rive Gauche" pioneered new generation.


Today, the shelves of the book shops of this city are filled with books about "May 68“.
M.Sarkozy was one of the reactionaries.
This is its 40th aniversary.

In the midst of such a trend,
he was gone.
Never to come back.

That precocious aesthetic boy who was to run through the world with his quick legs somehow realized that he had taken a wrong way.
And he found himself uneasy.



Rest.
Now you can rest.
Rest and sleep deeply.
Recall the time when you were young and mature,
And the time you had no time to sleep.
Recall the blaze of the Sun.
Please rest in peace.



This city taught me ﾒeleganceﾓ.
You are the one who let me smell the scent.

I truly pay my last respects, for evermore.

　“Going on means going far. Going far means returning."　

Takeji Hirakawa
Original Dawn of June 2nd 2008/

PS;

It ended.
One era certainly ended.
And
Times certainly changed.
If he had not come to this city,
the fashion industry of this city would have remained in the old, the restricted.

The birth of ready-to-wear would have been delayed.



We must hurry.
Hurry and find new values.
We must find the new values of the world of fashion.

A baby must have been born somewhere,
who is
precocious
beautiful
quick to run away
and can successfully be the icon of an age.

I see a shooting star.