Evening ensemble

Strong affinities may be seen between a woman and a couturier: Mrs. Winston Guest and Mainbocher, Mrs. Paul Mellon and Balenciaga, Audrey Hepburn and Givenchy. Yves Saint Laurent was Mrs. Kempner's designer of choice from the 1960s to the close of his couture house in 2002. His image of women conformed not only to the requirements of her lifestyle but also to her body type. With her rangy thinness, square shoulders, and fashion-drawing proportions, Mrs. Kempner represented the Saint Laurent physical ideal. This was to the oft-cited benefit of Mrs. Kempner, who would on occasion purchase a runway sample at discount. Her patronage of the house was so consistent that she owned many defining models missing from the comprehensive Saint Laurent Archives in Paris. In Saint Laurent, she found a designer whose atelier of tailoring (tailleur) was equal to his atelier of dressmaking (flou) and whose aesthetic of chic matched her own vision of elegant modernity.