PARIS - FRENCH fashion's top names, along with President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ex-model wife Carla Bruni, are due to attend the funeral Thursday of one of the country's most legendary designers, Yves Saint Laurent, official sources said.

Several hundred mourners are expected for the 3:30 pm (9.30pm Singapore time) funeral at the Saint-Roch church 'on an invitation only basis", Father Roland Letteron, the Roman Catholic priest who will officiate, told AFP.

Saint Laurent, one of the 20th century's greatest couturiers, credited for revolutionising women's wardrobes, died Sunday aged 71 of a brain tumour.

Mr Letteron said the service in one of the city's biggest churches would feature 'a lot of music'.

In homage to Saint Laurent, YSL shops worldwide are to close for two hours from 1330 GMT.

Chief mourner at the ceremony will be Saint Laurent's former lover and longtime business partner Pierre Berge, who founded the iconic YSL fashion house in 1961 with the designer, then only 25.

Also attending will be staff from the YSL empire as well as current designer Stefano Pilati and most of the big names on the Paris fashion scene - Christian Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Sonia and Nathalie Rykiel, Kenzo Takada, Valedntino and Riccardo Tisci.

Notably absent will be rival Karl Lagerfeld, 'away on business", according to Chanel, and Pierre Cardin, also not in Paris.

From the business sector, the head of the world's leading luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault is expected, along with the head of Christian Dior couture, Sidney Toledano.

Saint Laurent, who was born August 1, 1936 in the Algerian town of Oran in the pre-independence era, will be cremated and his ashes flown to a botanical garden in Marrakesh, Morocco, bordering a home bought there by Berge and YSL.

The couturier 'spent much of his life in Morocco. He will stay there in a country that influenced and marked him greatly,' said Berge. 'He will end up in the Maghreb where he was born.' -- AFP