Yves Saint Laurent Museum Opens in Marrakech

22 Friday Lifestyle Friday, October 20, 2017 French film legend Yves Saint Laurent Danielle Darrieux museum opens dies aged 100 in Marrakech The Yves Saint Laurent museum opened its doors to the pub- the museum, visitors bought tickets yesterday next to a red lic yesterday in Marrakech, the sunny, bustling, gritty facade of Tetuan brick and granite, which Dahlstrom said “fits Moroccan city beloved by the late French designer. The high- perfectly in the urban environment of Marrakech.” ly-anticipated opening comes less than three weeks since the Berge, who died earlier this year and was also Saint inauguration of a museum dedicated to the fashion pioneer in Laurent’s business partner, “often came to the construction his home city of Paris. site to see its progress,” said Sanaa El Younsi, a member of The Marrakech museum, designed by the French architec- the museum team. “What a pity he’s not here to attend the tural firm Studio KO, sprawls across opening.” The Majorelle Garden, next 4,000 square meters near the to the museum, has a special signifi- Majorelle Garden, which Yves Saint cance for Saint Laurent, who would Laurent and his late partner Pierre often design his collections in the Berge bought in 1980. It features a shade of the city’s dappled terracotta permanent exhibit on the work of the Fits perfectly in the buildings with the scent of flowers in prolific French couturier who died in urban environment the air. Today, the Majorelle Garden is 2008, and includes an exhibit hall, an one of the most visited tourist sites in auditorium, a library, a bookshop and of Marrakech the city. a restaurant. The museum was inaugu- Saint Laurent would come here “as rated Oct. 14 by the wife of Moroccan soon as “he finished a collection, to King Mohammed VI, Lalla Salma, alongside actresses rest and prepare a new collection” said Majorelle Garden Catherine Deneuve and Marisa Berenson. Foundation head Quito Fierro. “The garden was closed to the “This project finds its genesis in the temporary exhibition public between 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to allow Yves Saint organized in the Majorelle Garden, which was called ‘Yves Laurent to walk without meeting people,” he remembered. Saint Laurent and Morocco,’” explained Museum Director “Almost all the collections were drawn on a white sheet in Bjorn Dahlstrom. “(That) exhibition was so enthusiastically Marrakech.” — AP welcomed that Berge decided to create here, in Marrakech, a museum dedicated to Yves Saint Laurent.” At the entrance to This ﬁle photo taken in the 30s shows French actress Danielle Darrieux posing with a dog during a photo session. — AFP Danielle Darrieux, one of France’s most enduring and glamorous film stars despite her wartime collaboration with the Germans, has died aged 100 at her home near Paris, her partner said yesterday. She became unwell “recently after a little fall”, Jacques Jenvrin told AFP. With her smoldering good looks and sulky pout, Darrieux became a huge international star in the 1930s, playing opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the Hollywood romance “The Rage of Paris” in 1938. But her decision to keep working after the Nazis occupied France, and to star in movies made by the studio set up by their propa- ganda chief Joseph Goebbels, saw her branded as a col- laborationist. However, Darrieux later said that she was forced to take part in a notorious publicity tour to Berlin in 1942 so she could free her husband, the playboy and diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa, who had been interned by the Nazis as a spy. She left the German-backed studio after he was Dresses are displayed in the Yves Saint Laurent museum, freed and went into hiding under a false name. Three A man checks the books at the new Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakesh. — AP photos years after the war ended she returned to great acclaim museum. in a string of striking roles in Max Ophuls’ “La Ronde”, “Madame de” (“The Earrings of Madame de”) and playing the Queen of Spain in “Ruy Blas” by Jean Cocteau. Whatever doubts that lingered about her wartime activities were brushed aside by her searing perform- ance in the title role of “Marie-Octobre”, a 1959 thriller about the survivors of a French Resistance network who try to discover who betrayed their murdered leader. Darrieux-who died on Tuesday-was still working at 99, and lent her voice for the grandmother in Marjane Satrapi’s 2007 animated hit “Persepolis”. “I went to the studio like one goes to school, I was lazy and I remained so,” she once said of a life spent on set, which began in the comedy “Le Bal” when she was only 14. She was far from lazy, however, going on to act in more than 140 films and television dramas over the next eight decades. They including some of the best-loved French postwar films, and she struck up a particular rap- port with Jacques Demy, appearing in his “Les Demoiselles de Rochefort” as the mother and “Une chambre en ville” in 1982. — AFP Tourists visit the new Yves Saint Laurent museum. Visitors walk by the Yves Saint Laurent museum as it opens its doors to the public..

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