Yves Saint Laurent

It was a rare moment of quiet during a whirlwind month of women's fashion shows, when models slowly paraded out into a gilded salon wearing the final 15 masterpieces by the late Lee Alexander McQueen. Each look had been hand-cut on a dress form by the British designer, who committed suicide last month, and each one was more breathtaking than the next. The pieces were so full of religious iconography, including angels and virgins, that one imagines McQueen was contemplating his own mortality while he was creating them.

Marc Jacobs ended the fall runway season at Louis Vuitton on Thursday where he began it nearly a month ago at New York Fashion Week -- in the 1980s. But his collection for Vuitton didn't channel the artsy underground the way his main line did. Instead, it was about the corseted, crinolined and poufed 1980s of Christian Lacroix, by way of the Playboy mansion. Excess was the rule.

Two rare bronze sculptures that disappeared from China in 1860 sold for $18 million each as an auction of art owned by the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Berge, concluded with total sales of more than $484 million. The telephone bidder or bidders who bought the disputed bronze fountainheads -- heads of a rat and a rabbit that disappeared from China's summer Imperial Palace -- were not identified. China had hoped to stop their auction, but on Monday a French judge refused the request.

Beneath the cupola of a Parisian palace in the shadow of a worldwide economic crisis, the world's top art buyers gathered Monday for a historic auction: the sale of 733 pieces of art owned by the late designer Yves Saint Laurent, valued at as much as $380 million. An Henri Matisse painting of a vase, titled "The Couscous, Blue Carpet and Rose," went for $40.6 million, the highest amount paid for any of the French artist's works.

Karl Lagerfeld loves the smell of construction sites, hates people who can't be alone, and he won't fly without the cushion his nanny made for him nestled on his stomach. He's pro-prostitution, one of his favorite art supplies is Wite-Out and he doesn't believe in reincarnation. He's one of the most important fashion designers of our day, but more than that, he's a fascinating character, as evidenced by Rodolphe Marconi's terrific documentary "Lagerfeld Confidential," which has its U.S.

The first Yves Saint Laurent retrospective since his death earlier this year opened Saturday at the De Young Museum with more than 120 of the designer's haute couture ensembles. The pieces span his 40-plus-year career, from his early days at Dior to his final spring/summer runway collection in 2002, the year he retired. It's fitting that the exhibit's only U.S.

In the month since the death of revolutionary French designer Yves Saint Laurent, tales from his illustrious life and career have been captured in countless printed words. Now catch a different, equally poignant glimpse of the man: filmmaker David Teboul's pair of 2002 documentaries, "Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times" and "Yves Saint Laurent: 5, Avenue Marceau, 75116, Paris," airing back-to-back Saturday on Sundance Channel.

Death affects us all in different ways. Some sob. Others sell. Within 24 hours of Yves Saint Laurent's passing last Sunday, EBay was flooded with everything and anything that bore the designer's moniker or acronym -- from a $5 vintage pack of YSL Polish cigarettes to an Yves Saint Laurent paper shopping bag that was "used" but in "very good condition" and priced at 99 cents. (Oddly, shipping for the shopping bag was $8.95.