French industrialist Pierre Bergé dies aged 86

Pierre Bergé, the French industrialist and longtime partner of Yves Saint Laurent, the fashion designer, has died aged 86.

A well-known figure of the French left and a gay rights campaigner, Bergé was best known as Saint Laurent’s business associate and lover in the 1960s and 1970s. The two broke up in 1978 but stayed close. After Saint Laurent’s death in 2008, Bergé relentlessly sought to promote the work of the designer.

In 2010 Bergé became a major shareholder of Le Monde, the daily newspaper, alongside Xavier Niel, the telecoms billionaire, and Matthieu Pigasse, the Lazard banker.

President Emmanuel Macron said in a tweet after Bergé’s death: “He sided with artists, the oppressed, the minorities.”

Bergé died a month before the opening of two museums that he helped establish in Paris and Marrakesh to celebrate Saint Laurent’s legacy. The museums will display 5,000 haute couture garments, thousands of accessories, sketches and drawings by the designer.

The Paris museum is at 5 Avenue Marceau, where Saint Laurent put his creations together. In Marrakesh, Bergé built a museum next to the Majorelle Garden, close to the private villa where the fashion designer worked on his new collections. The couple bought the 12-acre botanical gardens in 1980.

François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of Kering, owner of the fashion label, said in a statement: “I will always remember him as a man instilled with a fertile tension between avant-gardism and the will to work relentlessly to inscribe creation in history.”

Throughout his life Bergé defended gay rights. He campaigned for gay marriage, which was adopted by Socialist president François Hollande in 2013 but triggered huge protests from conservative Catholics — which later morphed into the influential La Manif pour Tous anti-gay marriage movement.

Bergé, who was a prime target of the movement, was also known as a fiery leftwinger, which at times irked Le Monde journalists. Last year, he lashed out at François Fillon when the scandal-stricken conservative presidential hopeful showed sympathy for La Manif pour Tous and vowed to restrict gay adoption rights.

“Voting for Fillon, it’s voting for the reactionary France, Manif pour Tous, which sent me death threats. The collaborationist France. When are we heading for Vichy?” he tweeted. Mr Fillon described Mr Bergé’s remarks as “ridiculous”.

In April this year, Bergé married Madison Cox, a landscape designer.

Philippe Villin, a Paris banker and gay rights campaigner, said: “By displaying his relationship with Yves Saint Laurent and thanks to their amazing talent in creation, arts and business, Pierre Bergé has given a place to gays and lesbians in French society.

“His campaigns against Aids and for our rights make him a historic figure of the 20th century.”

In 2009 Bergé puzzled the art world when he sold hundreds of bronzes, antiques, sculptures and paintings, including works by Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian, which he had collected with Saint Laurent. The sale fetched close to €374m.

“I’m like a cat,” he told the Financial Times last year. “I like to clean up after myself.”