At the Court of Yves St. Laurent

YSL & Feminist Fashion Magazines, 1975

Today I thought I would share some unseen Yves Saint Laurent photos and a short interview. Published in the long-forgotten Italian magazine Libera in 1975, in its spring fashion issue, Saint Laurent is presented as the “king of all fashion,” the sole designer still truly influencing the whole industry. Libera was a short-lived woman’s fashion-and-culture magazine with a feminist bent, published by Adelina Tattilo, a pioneer in Italian erotic magazines.

Yves Saint Laurent. Photographed by Roberto Rocchi, Libera, March 1975.

While I plan to write a more in-depth history of Libera, here is some background on Tattilo and the magazine. With her former husband, Tattilo founded her first erotic magazine, Men, in 1966 (they had previously published erotic comic strips and a magazine for teenage boys about sex). As Playboy was banned in Italy, the following year, they created an Italian-language competitor, Playmen. Closely imitating Playboy in the early years, it followed the Playboy playbook of nude photographs of women alongside articles and interviews that would appeal to highly educated men. By the 1970s, Playmen had moved away from such a direct imitation, becoming more European in style and focus—sort of an Italian Lui (the French erotic magazine), with the soft-focus photography favored by Bob Guccione in Penthouse, the publication of stills from Italian soft-core porn movies, and the smart articles and interviews it had become known for. Once divorce became legal in Italy in 1970, Tattilo separated from her husband Saro Balsamo, and took over Playmen alone. For her, Playmen (and later Libera) were about liberating Italy from its conservative, Catholic beliefs; as she told TIME in 1971, “Playmen was started to fill a gap in the Italian press. I hope Playmen will contribute to changing, in an intelligent way, certain archaic attitudes toward love and sex among Italian men and women.”

Adelina Tattilo and Playmen

In much the same way that Bob Guccione’s wife, Kathy Keeton, had realised that there was a market in the United States for a feminist erotic magazine for women when she launched Viva in 1973, Tattilo saw the same opening in Italy. Libera launched in May 1974, with a cover by Serge Lutens and articles about Big Biba and the film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, several fashion stories, and soft-focus images of a couple making love by Roberto Rocchi, a photographer known throughout his career for nudes. After only two years, Libera folded.