Yves Saint Laurent

Fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent passed away Sunday at his home in Paris after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

He was 71.

Sources say that the designer fell ill and entered a Paris hospital last week, reportedly slipping into a coma Wednesday evening. The reclusive designer has been in worsening health for months. Word of his condition began to travel when he failed to appear in Montreal for a museum retrospective which opened last Thursday.

In confirming Saint Laurent’s death to French news chain LCI, the designer’s longtime partner Pierre Berge said, the designer “knew that he had revolutionized fashion, that he had revolutionized the second half of the 20th century. His designs accompanied the evolution of women.”

Born Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, in Oran, Algeria, on Aug. 1, 1936, the fashion designer is known for his sleek haute couture as well as his ready to wear styles, both of which embodied the best of French sophistication.