YSL

The forecast said overcast with a 30% chance of rain & the weather man was definitely WRONG! I slept in & headed to the 1:30 church service and a 72 year old man named Charlie Brown preached today! He reminded me of my grandaddy :) After church, we had coffee & I met some new people. The girls were all going to a cafe on Saint Michel & as much as I wanted to join them, I wanted to go to the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit more! This was literally the last day I could go to it before it closed & some of the girls have already been & raved about it. Much to my dismay, there was a long line but I HAD to see this & was willing to wait in the line! There was a mother & daughter from Canada in front of me & they were so annoying. The daughter kept e-mailing her boyfriend & the mom kept nagging her (repeatedly. it got old after like the 6th time!) about being on her iPhone. It was warm, but not too hot & for a while, I didn't think I was going to get in before they quit sellling tickets. I was worried! Luckily I only had to wait for about 40ish minutes & not 2 hours like the sign said. I bought my ticket & lied (whoops) and told the cashier I was a student and she gave me a 50% discount! Score! I had never been inside Petite Palais and it was gorgeous! The ceilings were incredible. There was a monster sized sign signifying the YSL exhibit. I can't even explain how amazing the exhibit was. I didn't know the Yves Saint Laurent just died 2 years ago...on June 1st 2008 in Paris. He was the assitant to Christian Dior & made his splash in the fashion industry at just 20 years old! Besides revolutionizing fashion, he was the first one to introduce men's clothing as fashionable for women, such as smoking jackets, pant suits & jump suits. They had original pieces from his collection on mannequins and I couldnt even begin to think how many mannequins there were. There were ball gowns, an entire wall of black suits, another wall of just his swatches (he was known to mix color) and even dresses from his last collection. I was walking through the display & saw an outfit that was a purple silk top with an orange tweed jacket & thought that it would have been the perfect game day ensemble! All of his models wore hats & some were extremely outlandish, in the best way possible. There was a room of his 14 pictorials taken for Vogue where he is posing in the nude, which are apparently very famous. Adjacent to that was a room covered with newspaper headlines and some pieces from his 1971 collection, which was by far his worst. Critics called his clothes hideous & he was highly scrutinized for his work. There were lots of see-through pieces, which was unheard of at that time. He created clothes that inspired him from his experiences, like bright colors which he saw in Moracco (where he spent an extensive amout of time) & even painters like Van Gogh (there was literally a jacket that was sequined and was an exact replica of van gogh's work)! There was an entire section of Chinese, Russian, Arabic & African pieces. The BEST part was the room set up like a ball room with tiered stairs that were covered with all kinds of old hollywood ball gowns. One had a HUGE pink bow on the back & looked kind of like what Marilyn Monroe wore in "Diamonds are a girls best friend!" I kept thinking "that one is my favorite...oh wait, no, this one is my new favorite!" I couldn't pick just one!! The exhibit ended with an enclosed diamond heart pin that YSL designed & would let the model who was wearing his favorite piece wear. The pin was massive. I had noticed the court yard earlier & wandered out to take a peek. It was like a little oasis! There was a cafe, 2 ponds, palm trees, tall grass & flowers. I didn't feel like we were in the courtyard of a museum! So pretty!

Since I was already in the museum, I looked on the left half at the paintings and sculptures, but only for a while because the museum closed at 6. I walked up Champs Elysees & got an ice cream along the way! When I got to the Arc de Triomphe, I noticed a military thing going on, so I went to check it out and it was a procession honoring all the unknown soldiers who have died. It was really cool since it was right under the Arc. I wanted to go to the top to take pictures, but thought I'd wait to do that until Jess got here! I walked down rue de Marcel and over towards Trocadero to see the Eiffel Tower from the other side. The sun was just about to set & it was neat to see the tower from a higher elevation.

I was really craving chicken lo mein from le Grand Epecerie & hopped on the metro towards Sevres-Babylone just to find out that it was closed :( It's hard to find anything open on Sundays in Paris! I was bummed :(

Just when I think I've seen everything in the city, weekends like this happen & I get to discover all new sites that I never knew were here!!