In Letters to Yves (in French: Lettres à Yves), Pierre Bergé processed the grief he experienced after losing his lifelong partner, Yves Saint Laurent, by writing a series of letter as a posthumous declaration of love.

Every page of the thin volume is ingrained with sorrow, marked by Bergé’s deep loneliness after the loss of his lover and friend:

“It is to you that I speak, to you that cannot hear me. Everyone present here can hear me, you are the only one who can’t.”

The letters are part of a public grieving process; the very personal grief intertwined with a literary summary of the legacy of the internationally renowned designer.

In the book, Bergé outlined the story of a life where personal and public seldom were separated, as he was both Saint Laurent’s lover and business partner.

To describe the emotional impact of Saint Laurent death, Bergé compared what has been with what no longer is.

The letters are constructed through numerous references to objects and places that were important to the couple. Their untiring work in building the fashion house, collecting art and traveling the world shaped their life together.

Ambitions and dreams that they had as young, could later on be realized thanks to their enormous professional success.

Bergé wrote the letter at the same time as he was preparing for the Christie’s-auction at which their world-renowned collection be sold. The logic of grief is clear – if Saint Laurent no longer existed, the remnants of their shared life must also be let go of. In the letters, Bergé gave a detailed account of the preparations for the sale that marks the end of their long love-story.

Through recurring references to furniture, art and food, Bergè shows how much of our existence is shaped by what we own and how we emotionally engage with our belongings.

Bergé and Saint Laurent’s many homes have been repeatedly documented in films and in books, the content of their vast art collection was well-known and for many decades the two were the world’s most prominent taste makers.

In Bergés letters to his deceased partner, another version of the life emerged; distant memories of a time when things were not so glamorous and fame not yet had arrived.

 Bergé’s love letters are written in first person, reminiscing about all the objects he and Saint Laurent had spent their lives collecting.

His letters can be considered a song of sorrow, and the objects that he listed are points of reference to a life that now had reached its end.

The belongings reminded him of a person that no longer exists. In the presence of death, worldly goods – furniture designed by Eileen Gray, oil paintings by Goya, the chateau in Normandie – had lost their meaning.

Once symbols of shared joy, at the time of writing they represented a time that no longer was and of a person who no longer existed.