February 3, 1958
Pierre Bergé: The Meeting

Pierre Bergé, who was attending his first fashion show, witnessed the young prince of fashion’s triumph.

However, he and Yves Saint Laurent did not meet until a few days later, during a dinner in the couturier’s honor at the Cloche d’Or that had been planned by Marie-Louise Bousquet, director of the French edition of Harper’s Bazaar. Raymonde Zehnacker and Bernard Buffet were also present. Bergé would leave Buffet a few months later.

I left him to be with Yves Saint Laurent, with whom I lived for fifty years. … How could I completely change in an instant? How could I forget, cross out with a single stroke, the eight years I had spent with Bernard? … All of a sudden the unexpected happened. Maybe that unexpected thing was love at first sight.

Bergé and Saint Laurent would end up forming a unique partnership that would serve as the foundation for the haute couture house they would open in 1961.