of fashion icon yves saint laurent dead at 71

Fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent dead at 71: Fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent died Sunday evening following a long illness.

International fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent died Sunday night at his home in Paris, longtime friend and business associate Pierre Berge said. He was 71. Saint Laurent was the last of an era of fashion designers that included Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, for whom Saint Laurent worked until Dior's death in 1957. Berge, chief executive of the fashion house, told France Info Radio that Saint Laurent died at 11 p.m. (5 p.m. ET).

Berge says,

There are not that many people in the pantheon of fashion. There will be two who will undeniably remain -- one who symbolized the first part of the 20th century, and that's Chanel, and the other one who will symbolize the second part of the 20th century, and that's Yves Saint Laurent.