Which designer opened the Saint Laurent Rive Gauche ready-to-wear boutique in Paris in 1966?

Yves Saint Laurent opened the Saint Laurent Rive Gauche ready-to-wear boutique in Paris in 1966.

Saint Laurent Rive Gauche opened on Paris’s Left Bank in September 1966, bringing the designer’s name into a more accessible ready-to-wear market. The boutique was associated with modern, youthful clothing and helped blur the boundary between haute couture and fashion sold directly to a broader public.

The venture was developed with Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s business partner, while the boutique’s early design was created by the interior designer and architect André Monpoix. Rive Gauche was not the same as Saint Laurent’s couture house: it was a separate ready-to-wear line, though both were central to the designer’s career. The name refers to Paris’s Left Bank, traditionally linked with bohemian and intellectual culture.