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The legacy of legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent was one of the most renowned fashion designers, his talent having transformed the lives of women worldwide. Throughout his tumultuous life, he created numerous outstanding designs. At the height of his success, he experienced periods of decline due to alcohol and drugs, with the consequence that when the effects of the drugs wore off, he fell into chronic depression.
It was during these difficult times that he found his "promised land," Morocco, which offered him peace and tranquility. This marked a turning point in his aesthetic perspective: he fell in love with this country, brimming with light, vibrant colors, and a way of life so different from the hustle and bustle of Paris. In 1966, at the age of 33, after his first trip to Morocco, Yves Saint Laurent immediately bought a house in the heart of the Medina. For him, Morocco was not just a tourist destination, but a balm for his soul, for his life.
Yves Saint Laurent had a deep love for nature, and he designed and created the Majorelle Garden in Marrakech. Majorelle boasts a wide variety of rare and vibrant plants. He considered the Majorelle Garden his second home.
Yves Saint Laurent passed away in June 2008. According to the designer's wishes, his ashes were scattered throughout the Majorelle garden so that he could live on forever with the plants and trees.
The love story between Yves Saint Laurent and Morocco goes even further, reaching the Ourika Valley at the gateway to the Atlas Mountains, about 30 km from Marrakech. This once barren land has been transformed into a botanical garden, reflecting Yves Saint Laurent's love for Mediterranean culture – an element always intertwined with the brand's creative inspirations. Ourika is Morocco's first organic garden, considered a source of inspiration for YSL Beauty's makeup and skincare products, and a fascinating destination for tourists visiting Morocco.
Ourika: An oasis in the arid land of Morocco
Recognizing his fond memories of the Ourika garden, YSL Beauty has now entrusted the garden's design to Ossart and Maurières – talented landscape designers and botanists, and experts in rehabilitating barren gardens, transforming desolate plots into thriving botanical gardens used in YSL Beauty's makeup, fragrance, and skincare products.
The innovative beauty of YSL Ourika Gardens lies in the experimental aspect of research combined with tradition and expertise, coupled with aesthetics. The design ensures that every aspect of garden care is done manually, such as terraced plantings relying on a gravity irrigation system. Environmentally friendly and sustainable, this traditional gardening approach believes in the scientific purpose behind botany: YSL Beauty has created the first garden dedicated to growing certain signature ingredients in its products, including a research field to test the most effective plants.
These colorful gardens boast over 40 species of plants thriving in harsh conditions, where the stark contrast between summer and winter climates, the desert-like heat, is instantly replaced by the cold, dry winds blowing from the snow-capped mountains. Among them are plants that Yves Saint Laurent loved, such as roses, jasmine, lemons, Bourbon geraniums, verbena, mint, hibiscus, walnuts, marigolds, and lilies... and especially saffron, a rare herb from Morocco (to produce 1 gram of saffron stigmas, Moroccan women must pick 115 saffron flowers).
Another notable example is the moonflower cactus, a plant that can withstand the arid, mountainous climate of the Ourika Valley. “We have cultivated a collection of moonflower cacti that can tolerate the arid, mountainous climate of the Ourika Valley. This experimental work could be used in research to create skincare products,” said Maurières.
Wonderful products from Ourika Garden
As a pioneering brand in the skincare field, YSL Beauty not only pioneered the creation of an organic garden dedicated to growing and researching plants to create the world's best organic beauty products, mastering the supply and extraction of precious ingredients, but also adopted a bold new approach, creating more and more groundbreaking products. Among YSL Beauty's renowned products is the skin oil crystallized from Moroccan moonflower.
Carefully hand-cared for in the colorful Ourika garden, the moonlit cactus boasts fragrant, beautiful flowers that bloom for only six hours at night, once a year. Before blooming, the cactus fills itself with lipids to create a special oil that attracts pollinators and promotes the complex of sugar components in the flower, triggering the cactus to bloom.
This rare Moroccan flower, known as the Queen of the Night, is harvested by hand only during one night between July and August.
Using a long-term cold extraction technology, the moonflower cactus extract skin oil possesses medicinal properties that protect all skin cells through its unique characteristics, resulting in smoother and more radiant skin.
Growing in harsh conditions, the moonlit cactus from Morocco possesses exceptional elasticity beneficial to the skin. YSL Beauty has carefully selected powerful active ingredients through efficacy testing, encapsulating all the goodness and strength of the Ourika garden into the brand's Pure Shots products.
Ourika Garden and its responsibility to the community.
YSL Beauty has been awarded an environmental honor, committing to reducing water consumption, minimizing waste, avoiding microplastics and PVC, and sourcing safe, organic ingredients.
Beyond botanical research, YSL Beauty also implements social programs to improve the lives of Moroccan women. YSL Beauty has partnered with experienced local farmers to work in the Ourika garden. They have formed cooperatives for cultivation and mutual development. The revenue generated from harvesting marigolds and olives has helped mothers send their children to school.
