Travel · Art

Musée Yves Saint Laurent・Marrakech, Morocco

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Location: Marrakech · Morocco
Words: Anna Dorothea Ker

Yves Saint Laurent‘s love affair with Morocco has been a long and lavish one. The prolific designer became enraptured with the country since he first visited in 1966 with his partner, Pierre Bergé. Now, a museum dedicated to his life and work has just opened in Marrakech.

Designed by French architects Olivier Marty and Karl Fournier of Studio KO, the duotone terracotta and terrazzo building is striking for its graphic red brickwork, reflecting the kinds of patterns that Saint Laurent incorporated into his designs. Centred by a circular atrium, the spacious interior houses a 400 sqm Christophe Martin-designed permanent exhibition dedicated to Saint Laurent’s prolific fashion design career. Accompanying it is a temporary exhibition space — the debut collection of which features the works of Jacques Majorelle — a library, bookstore, auditorium and café. In the words of his late partner, Pierre Bergé, “when [Laurent] first discovered Marrakech […] he was so moved by the city that he immediately decided to buy a house here, and returned regularly. It feels perfectly natural, fifty years later, to build a museum dedicated to his oeuvre, which was so inspired this country.” The museum’s opening — on 19 October 2017 — follows shortly after following the recent opening of Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris.