As a teenager, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, born in 1936 in Algeria, was already designing “Paper Doll Couture House,” replete with miniature accessorized frocks and people-scaled programs on which his sisters, playing clients, would write their clothing selections.

“It’s like a rehearsal,” said Florence Müller, a fashion historian and independent Paris-based curator who will show the doll house for the first time in the United States at the Seattle Art Museum in fall 2016, as part of the exhibition “Yves Saint Laurent: The Perfection of Style.”