French businessman and philanthropist Pierre Bergé was BOTD in 1930. Born in Île d’Oléron to a middle-class family, he was raised in La Rochelle, moving to Paris in his teens to become a journalist. He began working for a left-wing magazine, meeting Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Christian Dior, and began collecting and trading in art and rare books. In 1958, he met fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, forming a life-long personal and professional partnership. After Saint Laurent was fired by the House of Dior in 1961, Bergé proposed that they establish their own fashion label. They became a formidable duo, with Bergé leading the business side, protecting the shy, emotionally fragile Saint Laurent from public scrutiny. Under Mr. Bergé’s guidance, Yves Saint Laurent extended from haute couture into ready-to-wear collections, perfumes, handbags and luxury accessories, making it one of the world’s most lucrative brands, and the first design house to be listed on the French stock exchange. He and Saint Laurent amassed an impressive art and rare books collection, and built a modernist holiday home and garden in Marrakech in Morocco, helping popularise the city as a tourist destination. Despite his fortune, he was a committed Socialist, supporting the presidential campaigns of leftist politicians François Mitterrand, François Hollande and latterly the centrist Emmanuel Macron. In 1988, he was appointed by Mitterrand as director of Paris’ opera houses, firing Daniel Barenboim from the Bastille Opera for demanding too high a salary, though managing to increase audience attendance. An early and vocal supporter of gay rights, Bergé was a prominent donor to HIV/AIDS research and charities, and also campaigned against racist police treatment of ethnic minorities. He and Saint Laurent separated as a couple in the 1980s, but remained friends and business partners, running the YSL empire until his retirement in 2002. In 2008, he and Saint-Laurent entered into a civil union, a few days before the latter’s death. Bergé later sold much of his art and book collection, donating the proceeds to AIDS research and his charitable foundation. He married his long-term partner, American garden designer Madison Cox, dying six months later, aged 86. He was played by Guillaume Gallienne and Jérémie Renier in competing 2014 biopics, focusing on his relationship with Saint-Laurent.