Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian dresses, 6 August 1965: inlaid colour blocks with hidden seams, the Vogue cover, the copies
Yves Saint Laurent (@ysl) presented his autumn-winter 1965 haute couture collection on 6 August 1965: 106 designs, and among them the cocktail dresses that took Piet Mondrian's grids of primary colour and black lines off the canvas. The blocks were inlaid from inside the dress so no seam showed, French Vogue put one on its September 1965 cover, and mass manufacturers copied them, especially in America. The photograph is from the Dutch national archive, taken on 12 January 1966 when the dresses were shown in The Hague's Gemeentemuseum, now the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The V&A's example came through Cecil Beaton's collection, exhibited in 1971. Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé went on to own three Mondrian paintings themselves. Photo: Eric Koch for Anefo, Nationaal Archief, CC0.