By James Mackenzie
PARIS (Reuters) - France said farewell to fashion designer
Yves Saint Laurent at a funeral on Thursday attended by
supermodels, film stars and President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Office workers and residents of nearby buildings leaned out
of their windows as police held crowds back near the Paris
church of Saint Roch where the ceremony was held.
Actress Catherine Deneuve, whose aura of refined elegance
was most closely associated with the designer, read a poem by
Walt Whitman, followed by a speech from Saint Laurent's
long-time partner and business associate Pierre Berge.
"You could have slid into fashions at times, but instead
you remained faithful to your own style, and you were quite
right, for that style is now everywhere, perhaps not on fashion
catwalks but in the streets of the whole world," Berge said.
Although Saint Laurent himself famously hated his own time
as a conscript in the French army, his coffin was greeted by an
armed honor guard, whose stiff military bearing contrasted
strangely with the elegant mourners mingling after the service.
Sarkozy sat in the front row of the church alongside his
wife Carla, a former model who used to strut the catwalk at
Saint Laurent's glamorous shows.
Hailed as one of the great couturiers of the 20th century,
Saint Laurent was part of a distinguished line of French
designers from Coco Chanel to Christian Dior who consolidated
the reputation of Paris as the fashion capital of the world.
A shy and reclusive figure in his later years with few
close friends, his rank in the fashion world could nonetheless
be gauged from the array of celebrities at Saint Roch, a church
traditionally associated with artists and musicians.
