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| Feb 07: In fashion cyberspace, there are those websites that offer the equivalent of watching Entertainment Tonight and those that come off more like Masterpiece Theater. We find time for both, but our heart lies with the latter, such as the online home of the Yves Saint Laurent Fondation, an unabashed homage—spearheaded by Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent's longtime partner, unofficial hagiographer and most ardent champion—devoted to preserving and promoting the fashion icon's legacy. Even a casual browse through its seemingly bottomless image bank is a lesson in fashion history, with every look from every collection the couturier ever created dutifully documented. Spanning four decades from Saint Laurent's debut in 1962 to his final bow five years ago, photographs, sketches, clippings, timelines and captions provide enough clues and context to write a dissertation on YSL—the man, his life, his oeuvre. And with Saint Laurent references continuing to pop up on runways everywhere (jewel tones, turbans, ethno-anything), it seems as if we're not the only ones who've been logging on and taking notes. The domain also chronicles the foundation's current activities, such as Voyages Extraordinaries, an exhibition about the designer's many travels and their impact on his work. In all, the charmingly low-tech site is an indispensable resource, offering quick yet in-depth access to one of the most enduringly influential bodies of work in fashion. It's also a welcome antidote to the confounding sites of other labels, with their dizzying flash acrobatics and cyborg mannequins.
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