The Coaching Chronicles
Hello, I am Roach the Coach and I am your guide through the Coaching Chronicles. There are 4,500 species of us cockroaches so we are well placed, across the globe, and across time, to tell you about coaching…
Yves Saint Laurent is one of the most celebrated and successful fashion designers of all time. What is not known about him was his deep passion to coach and advocate for women in the workplace.
Born on 1 August 1936 in Algeria, he was christened Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent. His mother spoke often to the boy about her passion for the liberation of women.
Yves found it easy to buy into this idea – a strong mother and two feisty sisters, Michèle and Brigitte, helped him see the beauty and value of female leadership. But how to do it?
Yves was fascinated by clothing and frequently made paper dolls and dressed them. He could see the power of physical impact – first impressions, the story an outfit told, the messages projected by clothes, shape, colour and fabric. He saw that this could be his route to developing female leadership.
By his early teens, he was designing clothes for Michèle and Brigitte, and experimenting with materials. For example, he made a whole collection with camouflage fabric, but when it came to show his sisters, he couldn’t find it.
They, in turn, were often brutal in their feedback. If they didn’t like something he had made, they would vent their frustration, telling Yves he was useless. Yves thought his sisters needed to go on a Hanger Management course, but left that for his mother to sort out. He had hundreds more fabric puns he could have used, but he didn’t want to run out of material.
His mother saw his potential and sent him to Paris to enrol in Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. At 18, he was certainly young and inexperienced, but he was on a mission. He learned all kinds of dress-making techniques and worked tirelessly to perfect them. On one occasion, he was driving to the school and was so determined to master the art of knitting that he practised while driving.
Unfortunately for Yves, a gendarme noticed his rather eratic driving and chased after him, shouting, ‘Pull Over!’ Yves was so engrossed in knitting, he misunderstood the request, answering: “No, Sir, it is a scarf.”
He also considered getting into sportswear and experimented with a number of different sports. He loved tennis so this was easy to focus on.
His collection was seen by Michel De Brunhoff, editor of French Vogue, who recognised his talent and introduced him to Christian Dior. Christian was so taken by Yves’ style that he offered him a job. Under his tutelage, he set him up to be his successor. More importantly, Christian taught Yves how clothes could help get the best out of women and set them up to be supremely successful, powerful and confident on the catwalk. Yves was of the view that if clothes could do that to a women on a ramp, imagine what could be achieved if they felt that way in the boardroom.
Yves was filled with ideas on how to help women. He is credited with making ready-to-wear reputable, though the intent was to support women to get boardroom-ready. He wanted them to have clothes they could step into and feel powerful and impactful. There was a lot of scepticism about this at first, but the fashion industry came to see the value of his concept.
Yves realised that by listening to women, he would understand them and be better able to help them achieve their goals. He wanted to create something iconic to remind the world about this important lesson, so he designed the
Tuxedo for women. This was inspired by an equation he created to remember his coaching approach:
Total Understanding x Empowerment, Delivers Outcomes = TUXEDO
Yves continued to expand his fashion empire, helping empower women all over the globe. He went on to conquer the world of cosmetics and perfume, handbags and jewellery. His final conquest, however, was the one that would beat him – shoes.
Yves believed that stance was an important part of a woman’s gravitas and watched how some women struggled to cope with sky-high heels. Yves had been on a trip to Holland and had been touched by the simplicity of the humble Dutch wooden shoe. In homage to this, he created the inflatable clog.
Unfortunately, the catwalk on which his show ran had been put together in haste and there were many nail heads sticking up. Yves stood on one and popped his clogs – a sad ending for a great man. So, when you think of how coaching can support women, don’t be too clothes minded. As Yves noted, “Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman wearing it.” n
Sam Humphrey, partner and head of the Coaching Practice Group, Møller PSF Group, Cambridge