Famous French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent died Sunday in Paris at the age of 71. Laurent will be remembered best perhaps for making menswear sexy for women.

Saint Laurent’s three-letter monogram is perhaps as synonymous with — and significant to — 20th-century style as T.S. Eliot’s is with literature. He was “unquestionably the greatest designer” from the 1950s to 2000, says Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT (New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology). Saint Laurent’s influence and magnitude is eclipsed only by Coco Chanel, Steele says. “Just as Chanel brought modernism into women’s fashion, you could say Yves Saint Laurent brought fashion up to a kind of contemporary life.

“Most designers are incredibly lucky if they can contribute one thing to fashion,” Steele continues. “But he was like Picasso: He contributed to so many significant movements.” He championed women’s liberation in the 1960s and ’70s and the era’s youth-led street culture (from mod to hippie). He shepherded the rise of ready-to-wear with the 1966 launch of his Rive Gauche line. He celebrated the globalization of style, fused fine art with fashion (as with his 1965 Mondrian shift) and injected vivid color into a historically staid industry.