How You Can Step Inside YSL´s Atelier

Fans of Yves Saint Laurent will be granted access for the first time to the late designer's private design space as part of a new exhibition. Staged by the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, which protects and manages the designer's extensive archive, the new showcase will be held within the label's former couture house at 5 Avenue Marceau, Paris, and will include an unprecedented volume of artefacts.

The only designer of his era to systematically archive and document every one of his collections, Saint Laurent accumulated an impressive collection of his life's work. Featuring original sketches, prototypes, warehouse records, and more than 5,000 haute couture garments and 15,000 accessories, the constantly updated exhibition will aim to give visitors an insight into the designer's prolific creativity over the 40 years that he helmed his eponymous label.

At the same time as the Paris exhibition will open, the foundation will oversee a simultaneous showcase in Marrakech - a city close to the founder's heart, and a great source of inspiration for his work. Housed on the site of a museum which Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé saved from development in 1980, the new building will contain a permanent display of Saint Laurent's work - as well as space for temporary exhibitions, an auditorium, a research library and a café and restaurant.

"When Yves Saint Laurent discovered Marrakech in 1966, he was so moved by the place that he decided to buy a house and regularly go back there," Bergé said. "It feels perfectly natural, fifty years later, to build a museum dedicated to his oeuvre, which was so inspired by this country. As for Paris, who needs to specify that it is where Yves Saint Laurent created all his work and built his career?'