In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent visited Marrakech for the first time. The impact was such that the creator realized that it was there, in that North African city full of labyrinthine souks, that resided his creative sanctuary. Even though he was averse to travel, the designer returned again and again, until his work blended with Moroccan influences - the smells, the tones, the nature, the art - in a dialogue that lasts until today. Despite his death in 2008, the love story between Yves Saint Laurent and Morocco continues in the Ourika Valley, at the gates of the Atlas Mountains, where the future of beauty and sustainability is planted.
In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent visited Marrakech for the first time. The impact was such that the creator realized that it was there, in that North African city full of labyrinthine souks, that resided his creative sanctuary. Even though he was averse to travel, the designer returned again and again, until his work blended with Moroccan influences - the smells, the tones, the nature, the art - in a dialogue that lasts until today. Despite his death in 2008, the love story between Yves Saint Laurent and Morocco continues in the Ourika Valley, at the gates of the Atlas Mountains, where the future of beauty and sustainability is planted.

“Yves was a hedonist”, Laurence Benaim offers me, by way of confession, hours after we did the agreed interview before the trip. We are sitting at a round table, surrounded by glasses of wine, tagines and good mood, there are no longer any obstacles or “pre-approved questions.” She, as a journalist and official biographer of Saint Laurent, has stories to tell that would make for a thousand and one nights, but for now we stick to what can be published. I comment that this issue of Vogue Portugal will be dedicated to hedonism, that the coincidence of this meeting seemed interesting to us because, for all intents and purposes, Yves Saint Laurent was a hedonist. “Yes, he was. Totalement... Mais oui!” The life of the French couturier is full of joys, disappointments, dramas, triumphs, and defeats. But it was precisely the constant search for pleasure - or, if we prefer, an ideal of pleasure - that guided him. Brilliant, daring, avant-garde, he knew how to feel the spirit of the times (“l'air du temps”) and point the way to the future. His aesthetic forever changed the world of fashion, leaving a legacy of virtuosity - a legacy that begins with the introduction of pants in women's closets and ends with the socialization of Haute Couture, with the creation of his ready-to-wear boutique. Interestingly, one of the most important stages of his history is written in Morocco, far from the glamour of Fashion Weeks and the hustle and bustle of nightclubs like Le Palace or the Bains-Douches.
“When I discovered Morocco, I understood that my own colour palette was that of zelliges, zouacs, djellabas and kaftans. The audacities that have since been mine, I owe them to this country, to the violence of the agreements, to the insolence of the mixtures, to the ardour of the inventions. This culture became mine, but I did not just import it, I annexed it, transformed it, adapted it.”Yves Saint Laurent discovered Morocco in 1966, when he was 33 years old. “My first time in Marrakech was like a jolt: the city opened my eyes to color”, he said after his first visit to the city. It was a coup de foudre, yes, but it was above all an aesthetic revelation: the designer fell in love with a country bathed in light, with its vibrant colors and its culture, so different from the Parisian hustle and bustle. The effect was immediate. Yves knew that this would be his refuge, his creative sanctuary, just as it had been for Delacroix and Matisse. With the help of Pierre Bergé, his partner in life and work, he transformed the magnificent Majorelle Gardens into a haven of happiness and bought a house, where he went whenever he needed inspiration. The opening of a museum named after him in 2017 only served to eternalize his relationship with the city, opening the doors to the designer's very rich collection. And while this “background” may be more or less known to the general public, there is another, less famous, part of the narrative that also deserves to be told. That which concerns the advances that Yves Saint Laurent Beauté has made in terms of skin care and beauty thanks to the (special) powers of the Ourika Community Gardens. It is to make this work known that every year this trip - intended as a global meeting of friends of the maison - takes place where the projects the brand is involved in are explained first hand. Laurence Benaim is one of the protagonists of this annual meeting, due to the privileged relationship she had with the creator. But we will get to that in a moment.
They are one of the most effective ways to put into practice the intention to “give back” to the land and communities part of what it takes from them. Innovative and socially responsible, the Ourika Community Gardens were inaugurated by Yves Saint Laurent Beauté in May 2019 and have quickly become one of the brand's most important sources of inspiration in the development of makeup and skincare. Set up as an open-air laboratory, they assess the impact of production in the region on biodiversity and serve as a “workshop” for perfecting new (better and more sustainable) ways to source natural ingredients.A stone's throw from Atlas, which stands like a curious peek at snow-filled summits, they are home to 40 botanical species, grouped together in a harmony that mirrors the immense care and dedication that went into their construction - for which it took four years and the help of landscape scientists and agricultural experts, who helped “design” these gardens, where thousands of roses, lemon trees, and the wonderful geranuium rosat, which besides having regenerative properties (erases skin imperfections and restores radiance to the complexion) have one of the most pleasant smells we have ever smelled. But the Ourika Community Gardens are not just a delight for the senses. By bridging the gap with the local community, employing dozens of women who would otherwise be unemployed, they strengthen the bonds of this group and ensure that the spirit of empowerment, which has always been associated with the brand's DNA, extends to other areas beyond Fashion. “This garden has an epicurean vision. It conveys a very epicurean vision of the world. But we see people working and it's something very organic”, Laurence Benaim tells me at one point. We recall traces of the hedonistic revolution that was the life of Monsieur Saint Laurent, and conclude that, in fact, part of his heritage manages to have that more moderate, more thoughtful, side of epicureanism. It is here, in these green fields between the Altas and the infinite horizon, that many of the plants and flowers essential for the formulation of products like the famous Touche Éclat illuminator are grown. The goal is always the same: to leave more than is taken away. Among the various sustainability strategies carried out by Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, highlights include Rewild Our Earth, launched in partnership with the global NGO Re:wild, an ambitious program that aims to protect and restore, by 2030, about 247,000 acres of the planet's surface.
Yves Saint Laurent's fascination with Morocco was bound to fail. The first time he visited the country, it was said to have rained all week, more than enough to discourage someone who disliked traveling and was prone to mood swings. more than enough to discourage someone who did not like to travel and was prone to mood swings. It didn't happen. Laurence Benaim has a theory: “I think that the affinity comes probably from his childhood, because here in the Medina he could feel the atmosphere that he had in Oran [Algeria, where he was born], because it was a very cosmopolitan city where you have the Spanish, the Jewish, so very cosmopolitan, but he was born in a family that was very strict and that had a lot of taboos and conventional visions of life. Here he had the feeling of being back to Africa, the north of Africa that he comes from, but also the idea that he could reinvent himself through a vision orientalist and all the orientalistes. It was very important for him to have this kind of identification, and through these aesthetical affinities he could express himself. It was something between the reality of the land and his imagination.” And she continues: “It’s about creating. What he took from Morocco it’s also what he gave to Morocco. It’s not like cultural appropriation and it was not some sort of recreating a colonial Morocco, it’s a dialogue. It’s a dialogue between something that’s has been here for centuries and something that is linked to instants of happiness.” Indeed, all accounts relate how happy Yves Saint Laurent felt in Morocco - even in the darkest periods of his life. It was during one of these periods that Benaim met him. “I was a young journalist at Le Monde and I was sent to a Yves Saint Laurent show because nobody wanted to go. I had a terrible chief and she said ‘Ok, you can go to Saint Laurent, he is finished’, but I went there and I had a kind of revelation. It was very emotional for me. When I saw his colors, I thought: ‘Is this man crazy?’ Because his green, his turquoise, I’ve never seen anything like that, it was a kind of shock. I wrote my first article, he wrote me a letter and it was kind of a self-revelation for me, because then I started to document all the collections, I started to go very often to the atelier.” The green and turquoise that Laurence mentions were the warm colors that the designer had brought from Marrakesh.
Opium. Libre. Paris. Rive Gauche. Yves Saint Laurent perfumes mirror the man the press dubbed the “little prince” (when he was Christian Dior's assistant), only to realize that he had too enough talent and genius to fly solo. Opium. Libre. Paris. Rive Gauche. All powerful names, which stick in the retina, and which have in common the sense of freedom and revolution that Yves championed - Rive Gauche, released in 1971, is probably the first memory I associate with fragrances; the magnificent aluminum bottle, with silver and cobalt blue stripes, designed by Pierre Dinand, a hymn to design, rested on my mother's dresser when I was a child, to my delight. Interestingly, there is no perfume called Hédonisme, which would brilliantly close the story of a creator who always sought beauty and pleasure. “When you say Yves Saint Laurent you always think about the splendor of Yves Saint Laurent, the glory, etc., but he had so many moments when he had to fight: when he was at Dior, when Paco Rabanne and Courrèges arrived… He was too young, too old… When he launched the Libération collection… He had to fight against the taboos, against the intolerance, he had to fight against the hate, the establishment. He was the last emperor but he was never satisfied with himself, he always had this feeling of insecurity, but this insecurity was a key for him to go forward, to always search.” Laurence Benaim's remark encapsulates this idea of an artist who has never relied on success to ignore the discovery of new worlds - as, currently, Yves Saint Laurent Beauté does in Ourika. “He was the ultimate expression of sensibility, pure sensibility. And sensibility doesn’t mean weakness. Sensibility as a strength and vulnerability — to be, at the same time, masculine and feminine. I think he was one of the people that understood more the woman. He was a very emotional person, but it is so cliché to say that now…” Maybe not. The universe is full of happy coincidences (the best word for that is “serendipity”), and might help explain encounters (of Yves with Morocco, of Laurence with Yves) that seem to have no explanation. In 2008, Laurence was in a cab, on the way to Saint Laurent's memorial, with Albert Elbaz, who had also disappeared in the meantime. She was wearing a coat she inherited from her mother, which belonged to one of the creator's most acclaimed collections, Ballet Russes (1976). “When clothes weren't so expensive”, she hastens to explain. Getting out of the car, she forgot her jacket, one of the items she cherished the most. She never found it again. I tell her it was a way for the jacket to “continue on its journey.” She nods at me with a smile. Here is a hypothesis that Yves, an inveterate dreamer, would agree with.
Translated from the original on The Pleasure Isse, published May 2023.
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