“I told myself repeatedly, ‘One day you will be famous’,” he has said. “My name will be written in fiery letters on the Champs- Elys?.” Fame was not long in coming. At 17, Saint Laurent won a prize in a competition for the Wool Secretariat for a little black cocktail dress. Not long after that, he was introduced to Christian Dior, who invited him to work with him at the height of his powers with the New Look.When Dior died suddenly less than two years later, Saint Laurent found himself, aged 21, presiding over France’s most high-profile fashion house He is still the youngest person ever to be made couturier.

In 1960, he was drafted into the army and promptly had a nervous breakdown. In 1961, when Dior failed to reinstate the designer after his illness, Saint Laurent successfully sued the house for breach of contract and set up his own business with the proceeds. He rented a two-room atelier with Pierre Berge, his business partner and lover, and began work with a few staff poached from Dior.In the Sixties and Seventies, Yves Saint Laurent opened the first ready-to-wear designer boutiques under the name Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche. In 1966 he designed “le smoking”, a man’s tuxedo reinterpreted to relieve women of frothy evening wear, and caused a scandal by sending out a model bare-breasted except for a black chiffon shirt.Saint Laurent introduced the skinny sweater, the leather biker jacket, the safari jacket, ethnic influences from Africa to India, and fashion inspired by art to the fashion lexicon. It is safe to say that there is not a modern woman or man’s contemporary wardrobe that is untouched by his influence, nor a familiar item of clothing that he hasn’t pioneered. To honour Saint Laurent’s contribution to culture, the last ever five, 10 and 50 French franc pieces minted before the introduction of the euro were stamped with his portrait.In 1989 the YSL Group was valued at $500m (£350m) after going public on the Paris stock market, following an earlier $180m private placing of share investors Four years later, Elf Sanofi acquired the company for $650m. Saint Laurent had made the headlines once more, but this time it was over the high purchase price and the profits made by himself and Berge, which fuelled suspicion that the deal had been orchestrated by Fran?s Mitterand as a favour to the latter, his close friend.

A year later, Berge was fined Fr3m by the French authorities for insider trading, although this amount was reduced to Fr1m on appeal.Today, the YSL Group is owned by Gucci, which acquired Sanofi in November 1999. Gucci’s creative director Tom Ford is currently applying the same voracious makeover to the ready-to-wear Rive Gauche label that he did to the flagging Gucci brand in the mid-Nineties, and is making it the tag to see and be seen in once more. The haute couture side of the business, however, remains in the hands of Saint Laurent.Pierre Berge once said: “When the time comes, I will decide, without hesitation, to close down the couture house I must do that for Yves It is a nonsense to carry on without him. Look at Chanel without Mademoiselle Chanel, and Dior without Christian Dior It is more than nonsense; it has no integrity It is a sham.”A very lucrative sham, indeed. Dior is today presided over by the brash young British designer, John Galliano Chanel, meanwhile, is designed by Karl Lagerfeld.

It remains to be seen whether Berge will remain true to his rather melodramatic word. The closure of the house and any profits that might go with it would, after all, be a fitting tribute to a man who has contributed more to fashion than any other, before or since. The heirs apparent to Saint Laurent’s throneJohn GallianoBrought up in Streatham, South London, Galliano, 41, graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1984 and later moved to Paris In 1995, he was appointed as couturier at Givenchy A year later he moved to Christian Dior. He still designs both Dior and his own-name collection; his unbridled eclecticism and unashamed forays into fantasy continue to be met with hyperbole. Jean Paul GaultierGaultier, 48, is one of the last remaining French-born designers on the Paris fashion circuit. Trained under the great couturiers, cutting his teeth at Pierre Cardin and Jean Patou.