PARIS, June 2: The reclusive French fashion designer, Yves Saint Laurent, whose daring new dress code revolutionised the way women dressed in the 20th Century, died of a brain tumour on late Sunday night after a prolonged illness. He was 71.

He will be buried on Thursday, according to his long-time partner Pierre Berge.

As tributes poured in from around the world to the visionary genius, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife Carla Bruni is another Saint Laurent devotee, said: “One of the greatest names of fashion has disappeared, the first to elevate haute couture to the rank of art … He was convinced that beauty was a luxury that every man and woman needed.”

The eldest child of a wealthy French industrialist, he was born Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent in Oran, Algeria, on Aug 1, 1936, when it was a still a French colony. A shy lonely child, he became fascinated by clothes.

He was among elite club designers, including Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, who made Paris the fashion capital of the world.

The daily Le Figaro gave over its whole front page to the man who, insiders said, never read newspaper or listened to radio. The newspaper called him “the world’s greatest couturier”. —Agencies