About this work
Yves Saint Laurent is one the most influential fashion designers of the twentieth century. He established his eponymous fashion house in 1961, revolutionising how women dressed. In 1980 the designer paid tribute to the poets he admired, embroidering lines from poems by Louis Aragon, Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau in sequins on the backs of garments. This jacket features a line from Cocteau’s poem ‘Batterie’, which reads: ‘Soleil moi, je suis noir dedans et rose dehors, fais la metamorphose’ or, in English, ‘Sun, I am black inside and rose outside, which is the metamorphosis’.