Legendary French designer Yves Saint Laurent, who passed away on last Sunday in Paris after a prolonged illness, had a great friend in Delhi girl Kirat Young, nee Kirat Bhinder.Young, born in the capital and raised in Dehra Dun, went to London to do her ‘A’ levels. On a holiday in Paris in 1976, Young, a statuesque 5’11”, met Saint Laurent “by chance” and began modeling for his runway. “This was his Ballets Russes line, a very important collection for him,” she says over the phone from Paris. “It was very different from the androgynous look he was known for. He immediately took me on as the face of the collection,” she recounts. French and US Vogue photo-shoots, with famous lens-men like Helmut Newton, followed soon after.Saint Laurent, along with Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, was iconic for his modern interpretation of women’s clothing. He was best known for his pants-suit, the tuxedo (Le Smoking) jacket and sheer blouses for women. He, along with his business and personal partner Pierre Berges, was the first to venture into prêt-a-porter, or affordable fashion, with his terribly chic Rive Gauche line (named after the famous Latin Quarter in his beloved Paris); he also first did menswear and put his name on a fragrance.Young worked with him for 12 years; she also modeled for other sartorial stalwarts such as Chanel, Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene and Valentino. But she was in Saint Laurent’s inner circle of friends. “We used to go to a small intimate club called Seth, and dance on the tables. There was also Paloma Picasso, his head of studio Anne Marie Munoz, and his head of accessories Lou Lou de la Falaise,” says Young, now in her “very early 50s.”Young, who shared great camaraderie with her contemporaries Jerry Hall and Iman, remembers the master designer as “gentle, courteous, shy and retiring. A fashion purist. When he stopped designing, in 2004, it was like he had taken his liver out”.Though she is now a well-regarded socialite and jewellery designer, very little of Young is known in her home country. Her father, Pritam Singh Bhinder, a former air force man, still lives in Noida; her mother, Dr Param Bhinder, used to work with the United Nations and lives in London. Young eventually married a New Zealand hotelier, the now-deceased Tony Young, and has homes in London, Paris and Bangkok.Her jewellery, inspired from India and Thailand, is sold at the Oscar de la Renta store in New York, Arabesque in London and Nina Griscom in Paris, with pieces retailing at around US $ 1,000.“I still have several friends in Delhi,” she says, counting Maheep and Tunnu Singh, Bina Ramani, Mohit and Feroze Gujral and Bindu Vadhera among them.
