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Book Review | The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge

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The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge

The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge

Robert Murphy is an antiques dealer specializing in twentieth-century decorative arts and a journalist.  He was formerly Paris correspondent for W and Women’s Wear Daily and his work has appeared in Architectural Digest, Details, the International Herald Tribune, and other major publications. He lives in Paris.

Photographer Ivan Terestchenko is an internationally renowned photographer whose work has appeared in several books and in W, Casa Vogue, World of Interiors, Elle Decor, and Architectural Digest.

One of the most talented and influential couturiers of his time, Yves Saint Laurent began his career as Christian Dior’s protégé and went on to become a legendary arbiter of twentieth-century style. Saint Laurent’s extraordinary taste went well beyond the world of fashion, and in this lavish volume, the eight splendid homes he shared with friend and lifelong business partner Pierre Bergé are presented in immaculate detail. Notoriously shy, the designer and Bergé lived in luxury, surrounded by incomparable collections of furniture and art. From the serene interiors of their apartment on the Rue Babylone to the incandescent beauty of the Villa Majorelle in Marrakech, Bergé and Saint Laurent’s sensibilities come alive. Taken after Saint Laurent’s death in 2008, Ivan Terestchenko’s photographs capture these exquisite surroundings in full, showcasing nineteenth-century French décor, important paintings by modern and Romantic artists, and masterpieces of furniture, sculpture, and silver ranging from the Renaissance to the Art Deco era. Though the homes presented here are now empty, The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé is a testament to a rare union of passion, elegance, and supreme connoisseurship.
“The quintessence of very grand and highly personal French taste.” —Le Figaro

“As he did with fashion, Yves seized at one moment in time, a taste that was in the air, only to show his mastery. During the 1970s exoticism and Marrakech were currents in the air and St. Laurent became the authority. He was interested in Art Deco before it became fashionable, even before Andy Warhol and Karl Lagerfeld . . . St Laurent’s and Bergé’s taste is an expression of a culture and is always a story. When they decorated a house it was no longer an ordinary house: it became a story to tell.”–Jacques Grange

“Takes readers . . . inside all eight of the couple’s spectacular homes, from Paris to Marrakech.”–Elle Decor

“Some of the most influential interiors of our time.”–Town & Country

“(A) beautiful glimpse into their private world.”–Habitually Chic

“A visually stunning book about a richly layered lifestyle built over the course of 40-plus years.”–Home Design with Kevin Sharkey

“(An) amazing book.”–Decorati Access Interior Design Magazine

“You’ll agree that this is a book with which you will be enchanted. And if a little of that YSL flair rubs off on us, all the better.”–The Peak of Chic

“Terestchenko’s photographs beautifully capture the opulence and eclecticism of their dwellings.”
~ Clear

“In this lavish volume, the eight splendid homes . . . are presented in immaculate detail.”

~ California Home + DesignThe Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge
A selection of decors, mainly by Jacques Grange, that illustrate the sophistication of the houses shared by Yves St. Laurent and Pierre Berge. This is about as “high end” decor as you can get. However, several of the places are quite simple yet brilliantly furnished with a kind of taste rarely seen elsewhere. In a some of the homes or apartments simple objects and rare treasures are mixed together, but in an unpretentious manner. In others, extreme opulence is the key. However the workmanship of everything is the best that can be had anywhere. This is what places look like when money is no object.
Given the material that is covered by “The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge,” a reader might have expected this book to be one of the most fascinating interior design volumes issued in decades, and in this regard it does not disappoint. Indeed, the richly-layered environments and richly-enjoyed lifestyles crafted by the late designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge compel one to delve into the book over and over again.

“The Private World” is divided into eight chapters. The first is a 12-page analytical essay on the philosophy that guided Saint Laurent’s and Berge’s residential designs, while the remaining seven are each devoted singly to three homes in Paris, a work studio in Paris, a seaside house in France, and two homes in North Africa. These seven establishments are generously dealt with by photographs that cover exterior and interior spaces, full-room sweeps and focused close-ups of individual objects. Some of the seven locations and specific rooms have appeared previously in design magazines and other books. Still, the sum of the images offered here is stunning in revealing the care and resources that Saint Laurent and Berge devoted to collecting, decorating, and simply creating extraordinary backdrops for their lives and dreams. Overall then, it is fair to say that the book is an ode to the wondrous extremes to which a cultivated French taste for antiquities, modern art, and even adapted stage settings can go.


What limited text is offered in this otherwise ambitious book sets the scene for understanding what inspired Saint Laurent’s and Berge’s tastes and sensibilities, but one wishes for so much more. This desire for additional material is most strongly felt in looking at the individual residences, especially the villa at the seaside resort of Deauville. Here, for example, I longed for a great deal more information regarding the influence of Marcel Proust on the main house and Leon Bakst on the dacha. (That material is better handled, in fact, in the two chapters that Christiane de Nicolay-Mazery devotes to the Deauville property in her “French Interiors: The Art of Elegance.”) One wishes too that the publishers of “The Private World” had taken the time to eliminate the many typographical, grammatical, and syntactical errors found throughout the book.

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