On the day of Yves Saint Laurent’s funeral, I did not receive a phone call from my mother; I received a forward email from his friend Jean Paul who, like her, attended the final rites for the French designer at the Eglise Saint Roch. The email is very touching that it made me cry. Written as a tribute, I’m reprinting it here as it was written.

Farewell to a Master: Yves Saint Laurent’s Funeral

The ceremony had been expected by all aesthetes in France and around the world since the announcement of Yves Saint Laurent’s death, last sunday night at 11:10 pm .

No wonder everybody in Paris wanted to attend for a last tribute. Pierre Bergé, the mythic couturier’s lifelong partner in love and business, the designer’s constant support and guardian, the co-founder of the museum which sits now where the see of the Couture House used to be on 5 Avenue Marceau and bears both their names, had announced it as early as Monday : the final silent bow to Yves Saint Laurent would take place on Thursday, June 5th, inside the Eglise Saint Roch, in the heart of the City of Lights, before the couturier’s body will be cremated and his ashes brought to Palais Majorelle in Marrakech (Morocco). Yves Saint Laurent “has spent a big part of his life in Morocco” declared Pierre Bergé. ” This country has much influenced him. He will end up on the soil of Maghreb, where he was born.”

The French genius of fashion design who came to the world 71 years ago in Oran (Algeria), had his funeral celebrated today in a Paris church which does not seem to have been chosen at random. The selected Roman Catholic temple is also the parish devoted to actors and artists as a whole, and certainly a rightful place for the funeral of a couturier who liked the theatre so much and had raised fashion design to the level of major arts.

The entrance to the church, situated on Rue Saint-Honoré, one of the emblematic streets for luxury fashion shops in Paris, does not lie very far from the place where the House of Yves Saint Laurent also used to have its second Haute Couture boutique, when this department of the brand was still working until the couturier retired, six years ago. The adjacent street to the church, Rue Saint-Roch, is also housing the see of the Ecoles de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, the design school which Yves Saint Laurent frequented briefly (together with Karl Lagerfeld) when the fashion-genius -to-be was still a teenager.

The loop seemed rounded this afternoon, as we walked to approach the church, the knot of Yves Saint Laurent’s life was tied in the nutshell of a few blocks around the spiritual venue, which looked today like a recapitulation of the track which an exceptional artist has walked for many decades to reach a deserved glory, a worldwide fame and the best recognition a fashion designer can ever dream of: being the favorite couturier for over four decades to many world famous stars, paired to a most impressive influence on ordinary people and praise from so many women whom Mr. Saint Laurent has accompanied in their social evolution with his golden scissors, granting them power after Mademoiselle Chanel had given them freedom.

If the ceremony was private, reserved to the family and friends of Yves Saint Laurent, the sorrow was popular. Raised to the rank of a close-to-national mourning with the announced presence of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife -also a former Yves Saint Laurent supermodel – Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the ceremony had been kept as intimate as possible by Pierre Bergé, the natural, usual and tactful master of ceremony on this last occasion too.

800 guests were on the selected list to be admitted inside the church before the ceremony started at 3:30 pm. The only ones who did get in had to show their invitations to a particularly attentive security service, due to the presence of the French President and above all, to the impressive number of people desiring to attend and pay a last tribute to the French artist. A giant TV screen had been set up for them on the outside stairs leading to the temple, so that they could also share this important moment.

No matter how many barriers had been raised across the neighboring streets, popular recognition and tribute were everywhere and seldom seen at such a level of dignified and genuine sorrow. As lonely as he could have been in his life, with this forever unquenched thirst for excellence, Yves Saint Laurent would no doubt have been moved by this expression of admiration, the same popular appreciation which had made him instantly the darling of Paris and the world of fashion on the day of his first ever runway show, to later follow him inside his own fashion house to the very last show at the Centre Georges Pompidou in growing numbers.

Today, thousands of Parisians had gathered exceptionally to accompany Yves Saint Laurent to his last home. they could not help but be there, to say farewell to this embodiment and symbol of French fashion, to this unique blend of French elegance with contemporary a propos, for over four decades.

The legendary Yves Saint Laurent always did strike the right balance between the subversive spirit from the sixties and an unmistakably Parisian touch, a unique vision which was going far beyond the realm of fashion, to verge on art, social evolutions and create an inimitable style, known the world over as the Saint Laurent style.

This afternoon, before the designer’s coffin arrived inside the church, they had all gathered inside the church, the Saint Laurent girls and muses of all times : Betty Catroux, Loulou de la Falaise, Nicole Dorier, Catherine Deneuve, Claudia Schiffer, Carla Bruni, Laetitia Casta, to name but a few.

They wanted to surround one last time the man who loved them so much that he could only touch their bodies with the most precious fabrics, cut to perfection, sewn by hand, displaying like no other designer’s pieces the best proportions to magnify their wearer’s natural beauty and change them forever into fashion icons, movie stars, sparkling as bright as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo on the runway, the red carpet and the silver screen alike.

Even the less famous ones among the House’s models had come from all continents. They had composed together a humble but precious heart of white flowers as a collective tribute to their Pygmalion. It fiercely stood outside the church on top of the flight of stairs that led into the building: this same heart which had accompanied his inspiration from the very first collection to the last and which the master couturier was secretly tying himself in the shape of a necklace around the neck of the girl wearing his favorite look for the season. A ritual which the Saint Laurent girls wanted to renew today once more, returning collectively this heart of white roses to their mentor, as if to whisper into his ear or shout out to the world Yves Saint Laurent’s favorite word, drawn so many times, year after year, in many colours: LOVE.

Among the designers who attended the funeral, let us name: Jean-Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, John Galliano, who have held runway shows during the Paris Haute Couture week while Monsieur Saint-Laurent was still at the helm of his house until january 2002, but also the freshest crop of designers including Alber Elbaz (Lanvin), Marc Jacobs (Louis Vuitton) Ricardo Tiscci (Givenchy), Julien Fournié (formerly at Torrente and now at Ramosport), Jean-Paul Knott (Cerruti), and, of course, Stefano Pilati (now at the helm of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, the brand’s ready-to-wear lines).

Among Saint Laurent’s peers of the same generation, Valentino had travelled from Rome for the occasion, Hubert de Givenchy, Sonia Rykiel, Azzedine Alaïa, Kenzo Takada, Vivienne Westwood were also here, wanting to share this intense moment in the history of fashion. Only Karl Lagerfeld and Pierre Cardin were excused, as the announcement of the death and funeral had caught them while in the middle of traveling abroad.

François and François-Henri Pinault, father and son now at the head of the PPR Group, walked in the church nave side by side, Bernard Arnault, Chaiman of the LVMH Group and his wife Hélène did the same, before they joined Sidney Toledano, CEO of Christian Dior Haute Couture and Marco Gobetti, General Manager of Givenchy Couture.

Photographers like Dominique Issermann, Ali Mahdavi and many others also sat in the nave, together with some of the house’s small hands and seanstresses, together with Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor of Paris, together with Madame Munoz, the Creative Studio Director at Yves Saint Laurent Haute Couture, together with Farah Pahlavi, the former empress of Iran, together with Monsieur Jean-Pierre the Premier d’Atelier of the house’s taylor studio, together with Madame Bernadette Chrirac, the former French first lady, together with pop star from the sixties and seventies like Sylvie Vartan, together with Moroccan diplomats, and many, many more, but always carefully chosen personalities, friends and fashion writers, from France and abroad, working or retired, all generations mixed for this last rendez-vous with their King of Hearts, which none of them wanted to miss.

The expected coffin came in through the main gate wide opened, heralded by the applause of the dense crowd gathered outside on the blocked street or watching the event from the windows of Rue Saint Honoré. In front of the coffin, one man, one only man, Pierre Bergé, entered the church in a more peaceful and silent atmosphere, walking resolutely at the closest possible place to the corpse of Yves Saint laurent, until the precious and terrible wooden box covered in a yellow shroud was set to rest before the altar.

The funeral mass could start. It was punctuated by very moving pieces of music by Jean-Sebastien Bach on the organ, Johannes Brahms performed by a sextuor. A recording echoed in the church with the voice of the young Yves Saint Laurent answering Proust’s questionnaire for a journalist. The words could not be heard distinctly, but the sound of his voice resounded like a chant in these surroundings.

The service went on, celebrated mostly by the priest in charge of artists in Paris, Father Roland Letteron. who, after hearing Vivaldi’s Statbat Mater perfomed live by l’Ensemble Parisien and the counter-tenor Rodrigo Ferreira , after reading the Gospel, could quote Marcel Proust in his homily : “You belong to the magnificent and pitiful family of the nervous, who are the salt of the earth. Everything we know that is grand comes from the nervous. They only have founded religions and composed masterpieces. Never shall the world know everything we owe them and, above all, how much they have suffered to give birth to it.’ The very same sentence which Yves Saint Laurent had put into a frame inside his office.

When a recording of Bellini’s Casta Diva sung by Maria Calls was heard, memories and pictures of the runway shows and the dresses which many in the audience had seen, cut, sewn, worn, came back to one’s minds… and in front of the church decorated with only jasmine and white lilacs, so reminiscent of the arches that had so many times marked the entrance of every Haute Couture runway show by Yves Saint Laurent, everybody was in tears. Tears of sorrow, but also good tears, tears of redemption, tears of pride to have shared with a genius timeless moments of Beauty, tears of love, tears of longing for a time that is gone and that will never come back ever after this day.

Communion was proposed to the Catholics in the audience accompanied by the “ricordare” in the Requiem by Mozart. Before the final blessing, three emotional tributes were heard.

The first one was an excerpt form Wal Whitman’s “Song of Myself” read by Catherine Deneuve:

“I have said that the soul is not more than the body,

And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, […]

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,[…]

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God […]

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name […]

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever. […]”

The second tribute was a very personal speech delivered by Pierre Bergé who seemed to have kept it inside himslef only to deliver it better on this occasion only. Pierre was adressing Yves ” for the very last time”. He remembered t”the morning when we met “… ” the day when you told me, at the hopital du Val de Grâce : we will now found the House which will bear my name, and you will manage it”… “the very first collection at Rue Spontini and your tears after the show”… and foresaw “the day to come when I will join you under the palm trees”, before he ended up with a vibrant “Je t’aime”.

A beautiful French song by Jacques Brel “The Old Lovers” was then heard as the third tribute and everybody was listening or humming it in what had become by then a public celebration of Love. Allow me to quote only one sentence : ” … And did we need talent to manage being old without being grown-ups”. It summarizes best, I think the spirit of Yves Saint Laurent once more : that of a child who was still clinging to his dream everyday, only to make it come true, escorted in this never-ending quest by the faithful Pierre Bergé.

After the final blessing, the coffin was brought outside the church for representatives of the French Army to pay their respects to Yves Saint Laurent, due to his rank of Commander of the Legion d’Honneur, while the guests came out slowly through the aisles to witness how many had kept gathering before the church, behind barriers, during the ceremony.

The coffin left. It was applauded by the entire crowd through rue Saint Roch to Rue de Rivoli and everybody stayed for a long time on the flight of stairs. Many among us had not met since the master’s last runway show. Yves Saint laurent had gathered us all once more, and although we were sad, it was a joy to talk with each other once more. Yes, our lives would go on after…

They can go on now actually, now that we have celebrated one last time the pristine quality of Yves Saint Laurent’s divine talent and thanked God for letting us share with him his irreplaceable visions. What a responsibility are we now bearing, now that our Yves Saint Laurent is gone!

Pray we may continue to dream on…

[Jean Paul Cauvin]