The Yves Saint Laurent Museum, in Marrakech.

Like his compatriot Henri Matisse 54 years before him, the late couturier Yves Saint Laurent experienced an epiphany when he first encountered Morocco. Emboldened by the dazzling array "on each street corner" of "pink, blue, green, and violet caftans," he explained, Saint Laurent brightened his palette, incorporated into his sartorial repertoire such exotic elements as the burnoose, and made a ritual of returning regularly to work on his collections. And while Morocco awakened in him his celebrated sense of color, Saint Laurent and partner Pierre Bergé, in turn, helped revive the cultural legacy of Marrakech. In l967 the couple re furbished their first villa there; in 1980 they began restoring the Edenic gardens originally planted in the 1920s by painterJacques Malorelle; and in 2011 Bergé established a museum dedicated to the Berber people. Now, half a century after Saint Laurent's electrifying introduction to Marrakech, a new museum devoted to the revered designer will debut near the Jardin Malorelle. Conceived by architects Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty, the 43,000-square-foot brick-faced edifice will feature a permanent display of Saint Laurent's oeuvre, along with a theater and research library. Simultaneously, in Paris, the Fondation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent, located in the fashion house's former headquarters on Avenue Marceau, will reopen with exhibition spaces by Jacques Grange and Nathalie Criniere as well as a themed retrospective, "Yves Saint Laurent's Imaginary Asia." Berge—who presciently began preserving the designer's work in 1962, after the couturier's inaugural show—reflects, "And so the adventure we began so long ago, when we didn't know what fate would have in store for us, continues.