Safari, 1966

Beloved garb of the white colonialist, the safari jacket never looked this sexy, even in Happy Valley. Saint Laurent cinched in the waist, laced it tight over brown breasts that evidently weren't encumbered by bras, and raunched it up with thigh-high boots. The result was fashion fire that still burns today. There's hardly a designer who hasn't played with the idea in the 40 years since.

Le Smoking, 1966

Women had worn trouser suits before - notably Marlene Dietrich - but no one had designed them specifically (and sexily) for a woman's body. By hijacking men's eveningwear, as opposed to the more casual men's suits that Armani served up to women in the Eighties, Saint Laurent tapped into its louche connotations, tacitly placing women on an equal sexual footing with men. Placed alongside the baby-doll shift dresses of this era, the kitsch metallic and feathered eveningwear and the endless fashion spreads showing women as delicate, kooky china dolls, it's not hard to see why the uncompromising starkness of YSL's trouser suit had such instant (and lasting) impact, or why Bianca Jagger, the free spirit's role model of the time, chose to wear a YSL white tuxedo jacket when she married Mick in 1971.

Multimedia

• Pictures:Yves Saint Laurent 1936-2008

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Couturier who introduced trousers for women and whose elegant and practical designs shaped attitudes to fashion worldwide

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Belle de Jour, 1967

When Luis Buñuel needed a designer to dress Catherine Deneuve, the leading lady in his masterly exploration of sado-masochism among Parisian bourgeoisie, it took Denueve ten seconds to persuade him that Saint Laurent was the man. YSL instinctively grasped the brief - clothes that were impeccably discreet on the surface but would transmit the darkness of Deneuve's tortured sexuality. She wanted him to shorten the lengths. He resisted, arguing that they would be more timeless if they hovered around the knee. Right again.

The transparent shift, 1968

Viewed from today's era of tit-tape, see-through clothes look perilously close to a tacky stunt. But this needs to be considered in context. Barricades were crashing down, women's confidence was rising, the Pill was levelling the sexual playing field, and those 24-hour girdles looked like relics from the Eisenhower era. And you thought Madonna started undies-as-outerwear.

Tribal, Ethnic, 1970s onwards

Born in Oran, Algeria, to an affluent family of French pieds-noirs, YSL had an instinctive, uncontrived appreciation of different cultures. Years before Galliano began “mashing” different periods and locations together, YSL was enshrining peasant clothes, Ballets Russes influences and Black Power on the Paris catwalks - and he used more ethnically diverse models than many designers do today.

Mondrian, 1965

The little A-line shifts and boxy jackets of the mid-Sixties may have looked deceptively simple, but by borrowing prints from Mondrian, De Stijl and Picasso, YSL made a case for them to be regarded as populist art and for himself to be seen as an artist. The fact that by the mid-Seventies he was fraternising with leading actors (Deneuve), dancers (Nureyev) and artists (Warhol) placed him at the centre of the Paris Zeitgeist.

The cone bra 1965

These two cones did incredible things for Madonna's - and Gaultier's - careers in 1990, helping to cement Gaultier's reputation as an agent provocateur and creating the myth of Madonna as taboo-breaker. They also allowed commentators to fire off articles about the modern predatory woman. Sorry, YSL got there a quarter of a century earlier.

Research by Carolyn Asome, Alice Olins and Hannah Rochell

We love Yves

He is the reason why I am in fashion. He is a man I revered and tried to emulate.

Alexander McQueen

We were great admirers of his slick tailoring and the endless play on masculine/feminine dressing.

Stefano Gabbana, Dolce & Gabbana

The “Smoking” trouser suit was revolutionary. Clare Rendlesham, who ran the Saint Laurent boutique in London, was refused entry to the Ritz because she was wearing trousers - that's how new it was.

Paul Smith

I visited his home in Marrakesh 20 years ago. I arrived in a run-down minibus, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. He stepped out to greet us in an elegant, pinstriped suit. But after just half an hour, he was talking to me like an old friend.

Giorgio Armani

As a woman he made me feel powerful and feminine. As a friend I will miss his wit and mischief.

Diane von Furstenberg

Yves Saint Laurent, Fashion Memoir Buy the book

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