Yves Saint Laurent Museum names Maxime Catroux as vice-president

The Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris, which has recently closed for a comprehensive three-year renovation, has announced the appointment of Maxime Catroux to the newly created post of vice-president. Maxime is the daughter of Betty Catroux, model and muse of Yves Saint Laurent, and will work alongside the museum’s president, Madison Cox. “[Maxime], the goddaughter of Yves Saint Laurent, is working to transmit the couturier’s heritage, and is engaged in the governance and vision driving the museum,” the museum told FashionNetwork.com.

Catroux is a soft-spoken literary editor, well-known in the publishing industry where she has worked for her entire career, and is also vice-president of the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation. She is editorial director for the Humanities at Parisian publisher Flammarion, a member of the Décembre Prize jury, and joined the advisory board of the group that publishes Le Monde in 2019.

The Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation was set up in 2002, shortly after the couturier announced he was retiring, and its offices are located in the private residence on avenue Marceau that had been home to the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house since 1974. The Foundation’s assets are the Saint Laurent-Bergé art collection, the building on avenue Marceau, and the Yves Saint Laurent estate. In 2017, the Foundation entrusted to the Yves Saint Laurent Museum association the conservation, exploitation and diffusion of the Saint Laurent-Bergé collection, following the creation of the museum, which is an institution of national interest. The Foundation itself is now primarily active in sponsoring educational activities in fashion and textiles. 

Seven years after first opening, having welcomed nearly 1,000,000 visitors and exhibited over 2,000 creations, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris started a major renovation of its premises. The work has been commissioned to Selldorf Architects New York and Studio la Boétie in Paris, and is expected to double the museum area accessible to visitors.

A documentation and research centre will be set up with the aim of “preserving and promoting the archives and documents linked to the life and work of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. [The centre] will give researchers, fashion historians, students, industry professionals and enthusiasts priority access to an exceptionally rich archive, and to the documentation gathered over the years by the research staff of both the Yves Saint Laurent – Pierre Bergé Foundation and the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris,” as the museum told FashionNetwork.com. 

The museum will reopen in autumn 2027. During the next two years, it will continue to stage exhibitions away from its Parisian site. The first exhibition will focus on Yves Saint Laurent and photography, and will be held in July during the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival. It will document the close relationship between the French couturier, photography and some of the 20th century’s iconic photographers, exhibiting portraits by the likes of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and William Klein, as well as 200 archival objects (contact sheets, catalogues, magazines, and personal pictures) illustrating the central role photography played in Saint Laurent’s work and at his fashion house.