Yves Saint Laurent, the fashion designer who broke the mould of women’s postwar clothing, died last night in Paris at the age of 71.

The death of the reclusive fashion great was announced by la Fondation Bergé-Saint Laurent, the body he created with Pierre Bergé, his business partner and lover.

Saint Laurent, who retired from haute couture in 2002, was known to have been unwell although he never revealed the details of his illness.

Born in Algeria in 1936, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent was a shy, lonely child with a fascination for clothes. He already had a solid portfolio of sketches when he first arrived in Paris in 1953 aged 17. Michel de Brunoff, the Vogue editor who was to become a key supporter, was quickly won over, and published them.

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The following year Saint Laurent won three of the four categories in a design competition in Paris - the fourth went to his contemporary Karl Lagerfeld, now at Chanel.

Discerning the young man’s potential, de Brunoff advised Christian Dior to hire him and he rapidly emerged as heir apparent to the great couturier, taking over the house when Dior died suddenly three years later. Saint Laurent would say of his mentor: “Dior fascinated me. I couldn’t speak in front of him. He taught me the basis of my art. Whatever was to happen next, I never forgot the years spent at his side.”

With his close associate and lover Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent struck out on his own. Bergé, who survives the couturier, took care of the business side. Saint Laurent’s success lay in the harmony he achieved between body and garment - what he called “the total silence of clothing”.

He was also in the right place at the right time. Having learnt his trade at Dior, he founded his own couture house at the start of the 1960s, when the world was changing and there was a new appetite for originality.

Saint Laurent rode his luck through the rise of the youth market and pop culture fuelled by the economic boom of the 1960s, when women suddenly had more economic freedom. His name and the familiar YSL logo became synonymous with all the latest trends, highlighted by the creation of the Rive Gauche ready-to-wear label and perfume, as well as astute licensing deals for accessories and perfumes.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he set the pace for fashion around the world, opening up the Japanese market and subsequently expanding to South Korea and Taiwan.

Among his many fans in France was the actress Catherine Deneuve, who was always to be seen at his shows.

Saint Laurent’s career was not without controversy. In 1971 a collection modelled on the styles of Second World War Paris was criticised by some American critics, and his launch in the mid1970s of a perfume called Opium brought accusations that he was condoning drug use.

For fellow designer Christian Lacroix, the reason for Saint Laurent’s success was his astonishing versatility. There had, Lacroix said, been other great designers but none with the same range. “Chanel, Schiaparelli, Balenciaga and Dior all did extraordinary things. But they worked within a particular style,” he explained. “Yves Saint Laurent is much more versatile, like a combination of all of them. I sometimes think he’s got the form of Chanel with the opulence of Dior and the wit of Schiaparelli.”

In his later years the depression that had haunted him all his life became more oppressive, and at his farewell bash in 2002 he admitted to having recourse to “those false friends which are tranquillisers and narcotics”.

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