French president mourns YSL at Paris funeral

The coffin of fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, covered by French national flag, is carried out of the Saint-Roch church in Paris, after the funeral mass held by father Roland Lettero. With a military salute, crowds thronging the streets and the cream of global couture in attendance, France's "prince of fashion", Yves Saint Laurent, was given a grand send-off at his funeral Thursday.[Agencies]

Although Saint Laurent himself famously hated his own time as a conscript in the French army, his coffin was greeted by an armed honor guard, whose stiff military bearing contrasted strangely with the elegant mourners mingling after the service.

Sarkozy sat in the front row of the church alongside his wife Carla, a former supermodel who used to strut the catwalk at Saint Laurent's glamorous shows.