YSL

Splashed across the upper fold of today's Financial Times of London is a photo in colour of three people leaving the artist's church in Paris--St. Roch--in black and with the mournful sorrow that funeral's allow. On the left in black and with a grim expression is president of France Nicholas Sarkozy, in the middle the sad face of his wife Carla Bruni Sarkozy, a former model, caught with the swift movement as though she stepped out of a fashion show's walk, and in a pants suit from the drawing boards of Yves St. Laurent, whom she came to mourn and pay her last respects, and then there was Pierre Berge, whom the camera caught not only in deep sorrow but in the grief he felt at the loss of his lover, his life long campanion, and business partner. All three are in traditional black, and that black captures the spirit of all France honouring her talented son who at 21 a reed like waif revolutionised women's fashion in 1959! A son of France's Algeria born in the port city of Oran, made famous in Camus' La Peste, who brought through 5 decades the fashion world to newer heights. France has buried a distinguished son, whose sexuality it never questioned.