"He had a lot of tenderness for women, he found a solution for them, because a woman dressed in Saint Laurent felt immediately, suddenly better." -  former model Ines de la Fressange on France's RTL radio

"He was a great designer, and I admired his fidelity to a style that was precise and without comparison, as well as his sense of fantasy and his great respect for women and beauty. He was also a great artist. I am very sad about his departure." -  Valentino

"She (Saint Laurent's mother) was the one I thought of first this morning on learning that he had escaped the suffering of a world that resembled him less and less, to join the pantheon that is his."  - Christian Lacroix

"He was like Picasso in the way he kept transforming his style and yet each new one had an incredible impact on fashion. Early on, he took over for Dior and was the great couturier, then he had the great beatnik look. He was the first designer to do a subcultural style _ it received bad reviews but, in retrospect, it was powerful. He brought contemporary and modern art into fashion with the Mondrian prints and pop art and he was the greatest colorist of the 20th century, which you saw with his peasant and Chinese and African collections. He was the greatest exponent of exoticism after Poiret." - Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology

"St. Laurent has always been one of my greatest fashion mentors. ... Every woman in the world, sometimes without even knowing it, has something in her closet inspired by Yves Saint Laurent. His genius is irreplacable." - Michael Kors

"Every designer has taken so much of Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent is in everything we do." - Belgium-based designer Dries van Noten