Production
In March 2013, The Weinstein Company acquired the rights to the film to distribute in the United States, while Entertainment One holds U.K., Australian and Benelux distribution rights, including Canadian distribution rights.[8]
Lespert called Niney and over a drink a beer he told the actor, "I want to tell one of the most beautiful love stories and creation stories of our century. It’s the story of Yves Saint Laurent, I want you to play Yves Saint Laurent"; as Niney didn’t know about his character he undertook research and realised that "he was a really beautiful, complex, iconic and mysterious character". He added that the "character was too beautiful to be true, I didn’t want to miss anything. I knew I needed time to refine it, spend time in his skin before being on the set and, on the set, not doing imitation but being really free with the character". He had three coaches for five months, a stylist, someone to help with the sketches, and made a point of meeting Saint Laurent's best friends - in particular Betty Catroux, who helped in recounting everything "drugs, partying, sex" that happened behind closed doors.[9]
Niney commented that he faced three challenges: that he had "to play a manic depressive", that he aged in the film "from around 18 to 46 years old" and lastly "not to lose the link between all the faces of the character. He is changing so much from the little boy at the beginning of the movie, then the hippies in the 70s with the long beard and the long hair and then older again".[9]
Lespert chose to shoot using real locations and clothes – using dresses out of the cold rooms and museums and Saint Laurent's own real pen, draft, desk, and walking stick.[9]
Filming
Principal photography began in June 2013. Part of the filming was done with Bergé, who sent "out models on the runway for a reconstitution of Saint Laurent's famous Opéra Ballets Russes collection of 1976, which was filmed at the fashions show's original venue, the Westin hotel (formerly known as the InterContinental.)"[4] Bergé's foundation loaned the film "77 vintage outfits from its archives and allowed Lespert to film certain scenes at its headquarters on Avenue Marceau in Paris."[4] Bergé "praised Lespert's film—based largely on a Laurence Benaïm biography of Saint Laurent and Bergé's reminiscences in his book Letters to Yves—for showing the designer's demons." Bergé said "...there are details I don't like, but that is of no importance whatsoever. You have to take the movie as it is—as a whole."[4]
