[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwuuWiKn5ik&hl=en]

Iconic fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent has died at age 71. It is in part because of his influence on modern popular style that trousers (or pants, if you're an American) are now considered fashionable for women.

Two snips from the NYT obit:

Originally a maverick and a generator of controversy — in 1968, his suggestion that women wear pants as an everyday uniform was considered revolutionary — Mr. Saint Laurent developed into a more conservative designer, a believer in evolution rather than revolution. He often said that all a woman needed to be fashionable was a pair of pants, a sweater and a raincoat. “My small job as a couturier,” he once said, “is to make clothes that reflect our times. I’m convinced women want to wear pants.”

“Every man needs aesthetic phantoms in order to exist,” Mr. Saint Laurent said at the announcement of his retirement. “I have known fear and the terrors of solitude. I have known those fair-weather friends we call tranquilizers and drugs. I have known the prison of depression and the confinement of hospital. But one day, I was able to come through all of that, dazzled yet sober.”