The reclusive Frenchman, who had retired from fashion in 2002 after four decades at the top of his trade, had been ill for some time, suffering respiratory illness.

Obituary: Yves Saint Laurent
Once the protégé of Christian Dior, Saint Laurent was one of a handful of designers who dominated 20th century fashion, on a par with Coco Chanel and Christian Lacroix.

As he bowed out seven years ago, Saint Laurent said: "I have nothing in common with this new world of fashion, which has been reduced to mere window-dressing. Elegance and beauty have been banished."
 
Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent was born in the coastal town of Oran, Algeria, on August 1, 1936, at a time when the North African country was still considered part of France.

A shy, lonely, child, he became fascinated by clothes, and already had a solid portfolio of sketches when he first arrived in Paris in 1953, aged 17.

Michel de Brunoff, editor of Vogue, who was to become a key supporter, was quickly won over, and published them.

The following year Saint Laurent won three of the four categories in a design competition in Paris – and de Brunoff advised Christian Dior to hire him.

He took over the fashion house when Dior died suddenly three years later, but in 1960 was called up to fight in his native Algeria in the war of independence.

On his return, he struck out on his own founding his own couture house at the start of the 1960s, at a time 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, and one of his best-known creations a ladies jacket and pants called "le smoking", became a symbol for the emerging women's movement.

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