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I first met Yves Saint Laurent in the mid-eighties, shortly after the launch of Fashion Television. In those days, his shows were held in the posh mirrored ballroom of Paris's Intercontinental Hotel, with its luxe chandeliers and small, elegant, gilt chairs. It was a particularly upbeat collection.

Backstage, in the midst of the crush of well-wishers, my camera and I found Saint Laurent, tired, but smiling, eyes twinkling. "You seem very happy today, Mr. Saint Laurent. What makes you so happy?" He closed his eyes.

After a few beats, he looked into my eyes and, grinning, shrugged his huge shoulders, and answered in that great, deep voice, with a kind of slurred speech, "I don't know..." as if he, too, was surprised by his own fleeting happiness.

Saint Laurent's bouts of depression were legendary. He had earned a reputation as a true suffering artist since the early days, when, in 1960, he was conscripted into the army, and after only 19 days in the barracks, broke down and was institutionalized, pumped full of sedatives and given shock treatments. "Est-que c'est dur d'être un artiste?" I asked. "Oui," he laughed, charmed by the question. "Tres, tres dur ..."

Of all the fashion spectacles I've witnessed over the past two decades, none can compare with the 40-year Yves Saint Laurent retrospective that was staged in 2002 at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, shortly after the King of Couture announced his retirement. The moment the first models came down the runway to the beat of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, sporting navy pea coats and wide white pants, we were transported to that time when we first fell in love with fashion. And for the next hour, Saint Laurent - who began conquering the fashion world in 1957, when, at the tender age of 21, he took over the design reigns at Christian Dior - reminded us what an integral role he had played in our style-conscious lives.

From dramatic jumpsuits, safari jackets, pantsuits, sheer blouses, Mondrian dresses and pop-art frocks to his classic "smoking" tuxedo of 1966, the "Out of Africa" collection of '67/'68, ruched dresses, and wild, green fox puff jacket strutted by Naomi Campbell, the dreams of our youth came rushing back. Then the exoticism crept in, with a rainbow of seventies "Ballets Russes" fantasies - lavishly gold-embroidered peasant blouses teamed with fur-trimmed vests and sumptuous ball skirts, followed by a tribute to modern Chinoiserie.

The finale featured a barrage of diverse tuxedo looks and Catherine Deneuve - the designer's friend and muse since the early sixties, when he did her wardrobe for Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour - singing Ma Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour as Saint Laurent made his final march down the runway.

"I'm afraid Yves Saint Laurent is the last one to think about elegant women," the designer's long-time business partner and former lover, Pierre Berge, lamented at YSL's couture show the previous summer. "Now things are different. ... Life's changed. Maybe in a way, it's more modern, and easier... I don't want to argue with that. Everybody has a right to design clothes the way they feel. But for Saint Laurent, who loves and respects women and their bodies, it's very difficult to understand the feel of today."

Berge went on to explain that it was creativity, not marketing, that always came first for Saint Laurent. And because of that, he was at odds with the way the fashion world now functioned. At the end of that show, he hinted at his impending departure. "The work is very, very hard for me now. I'm beginning to be old, and I must think about retirement," he told me. A few months later, he called it quits, openly discussing his disdain for where fashion was heading, citing that there was no more room for art in the industry.

While Yves Saint Laurent undoubtedly suffered, it's a legacy of elegant ease that he left us with in the end. For a generation of women who rightly believed we should - and could - have it all, he delivered in spades. From plays on androgyny to blasts of unbridled sensuality, he unleashed fashion's possibilities and sent our imaginations soaring. He taught us that dressing up was an art form.

Above all, Saint Laurent made us feel confident, cherished and ultimately beautiful. "He was the world's greatest lover," British design genius Vivienne Westwood told me after his Paris swan song. "He made it easy for women."

Yves Saint Laurent, a retrospective of the designer's haute-couture creations from 1962 to 2002, runs from May 29 to Sept. 28

at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. For more information,

call 514-285-2000 or go to http://www.mmfa.qc.ca.

Jeanne Beker is the host of

FashionTelevision and the

editor-in-chief of FQ magazine.