On his website, Hedi Slimane has posted some of the beautiful yet haunting images he took backstage at Yves Saint Laurent‘s epic farewell collection in 2002. Monsieur fastidiously checks garments, Pierre Bergé attentively watches the monitor, models nervously await their turn. It is a moment of celebration, but the tenseness is palpable.

Hedi’s own time at YSL, designing men’s, is the stuff of legend. “I just loved the traditional house,” he recently told us, “with the original cast, the magic, warmth, authenticity, the beyond French “tragi-comedy” of it, and the Parisian grandeur of Avenue Marceau. There is nothing like it anywhere…Yves Saint Laurent was, as a couture house, the last true house. Magic.” Read more of our exclusive interview with Hedi Slimane.