The images document the retrospective Haute Couture runway designer Yves Saint Laurent organised at the Centre Pompidou in January 2002. During the show, all the most well-known models – from Jerry Hall to Claudia Schiffer and Carla Bruni, amongst other – payed tribute to the designer wearing new creations and iconic past model YSL designed in the previous years. For example, Schiffer wore the infamous ‘Saharienne’, re-enacting the infamous image in which model Verushka poses wearing the same outfit more than 30 years before.

The designer decided to send down the runway many of the most iconic pieces he created during his long career: the Mondrian dress from 1966; the big green fur and the so-called ‘dress with naked back’ from the famous liberation collection from 1971. It was a sensational show, which Vogue’s Stephen Tods defined it as ‘a career summation without comparison—a tour through 40 years of fashion that distilled the essence of a legend.’