Yves Saint Laurent (Q1699)
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French luxury fashion house
- YSL
- Saint Laurent
- Saint Laurent Paris
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yves Saint Laurent |
French luxury fashion house |
|
Statements
2016
creative designer
2016
design director for women's ready-to-wear
freelance designer
men's sportswear design
1998
intern
summer worker
shoe designs
designer
When Anthony Vaccarello made his debut for Saint Laurent back in the fall of 2016, he showed at the house’s Left Bank headquarters at Rue de Bellechasse while they were being renovated. Essentially it was like being on the most glamorous building site ever, with a towering crane holding aloft an enormous neon version of the YSL logo in the night sky to remind you exactly where you were. (I mean, come on: Hallowed ground!)Flash forward eight years—Really? It has been that long? It feels like yesterday—and Vaccarello decided to show once again at Rue de Bellechasse. The only construction this time was the semi open air set of a golden oval elevated into the air, akin to a huge picture frame, under which we all sat. The runway, meanwhile, was painted a shade of deep cobalt-y blue which was only revealed when the light hit in a certain way. (Or the rain. Yikes, that inclement Parisian weather strikes again! Kudos to the models who still managed to navigate it with absolute grace and, it has to be said, steely determination.)Yet Vaccarello went back in another way too, specifically conjuring up Yves Saint Laurent himself, or more specifically, his personal style, right down to his weighty eyeglasses. It made for a truly exceptional collection, strong and compelling from beginning to end. Vaccarello showcased impeccable mannish tailoring in anthracite or black or plum of a distinctly Yves persuasion, with double breasted jackets and wide pants which were soft but so expertly cut they came without a hint of sloppy slouchiness.Vaccarello had been inspired, he said, by reading an interview from around 2000 with Saint Laurent when he’d been asked about who his woman was, and the designer had replied it was him. “After I read it, I thought, ‘OK, maybe that’s where I want to start,’” he said backstage. “My last men’s show in March had been all about tailoring, but based on flou; I wanted this one to be the opposite—more strict. It’s not about when I would do a tuxedo for a woman which was worn naked underneath. The suits come with shirts, ties. You’re dressed. It’s about control, and power, in a way.”Sometimes too a greatcoat or trench or voluminous leather aviator jacket was thrown over the looks—but regardless, everything came accessorized to the hilt, from the aforementioned eyewear and wide ties, to the jeweled shoes and the weighty gold bangles which gleamed from every wrist.
It’s not the first time that Vaccarello has embraced the ‘done’ look that’s so much part of the YSL lexicon. Yet in a world where everything just seems to be getting ever more reductive and oversimplified, all fleeting image with nothing really behind it, Vaccarello’s counter-intuitive move to go against the grain was magical.
24 September 2024
Monsieur Yves Saint Laurent was a designer who not only flou-ed with the best of them, he was the best of them. And in the ever fascinating way that Anthony Vaccarello continues to intuit the raison d’etre of the house—dress women, do it chicly, and sometimes bring a somewhat (and very YSL) eroticized edge to the proceedings—he has alighted (no pun intended) on the intricate delicacy of Saint Laurent from the past. That means the house’s use of lace, and lingerie, and a certain languorous silhouette scented with the heady bouquet of the 1920s and 1930s. To make them work in 2024, Vaccarello has thought in terms of oppositions—the weighty with the gossamer light, the substantial over the soft, and transparency contrasted with toughness.Vaccarello’s fall rests, then, in some part on its rugged iteration of outerwear. There were plenty of great weathered leather coats, blousons, and belted utility jackets here, some with a big shouldered swagger, or punctuated with gleaming biker snaps and zippers. There were also, it’s worth noting, two absolutely to die for le smokings, particularly the one suit whose tux jacket was faced with lace. Yet more lace turned up in the form of a peignoir-like trench coat. But essentially the drama was wrung out of the power of contrast—and what lies beneath those statement-y top layers…You’re familiar, no doubt, with the winter 2024 collection, which caused a bit of a stir. It was built on sheer stocking dressing, with fake furs casually thrown over it all: a cinematic spectacle of a runway show shrouded in brocade drapes which evoked Martha Graham by way of the Le Sept nightclub, that 1970s den of iniquity beloved of YSL and his gang back in the day. (In the time-shifting way that fashion often works these days, Saint Laurent, like other houses, choses to show the pre-collections which precede its runway shows after those shows. So you saw winter this past February, and are seeing fall now.There were definitely pre-echoes of winter in this fall collection: the ’80s-inflected pairings of gauze-y draped bodysuits with pencil skirts with more of the faux fuzziness in the form of wraps or chain strap bags. Emphasizing the delicacy of the lingerie-esque pieces, Vaccarello partnered richly detailed black lace hose with just about everything, such a classically, undeniably, naughtily playful and firmly tongue-in-chic Parisian gesture.
It’s more French than Catherine Deneuve, than Gauloises, than Jean-Luc Godard—and all at the same time.Elsewhere, Vaccarello’s dominant silhouette, lean yet yielding, was repeated in lace and satin, and in the same color palette, which moved from the house classic black to blush pink, a pebble-y gray, a shade of rose tinged with taupe, and a brown which shimmered and shone. The period boudoir vibe was played up with a slew of gorgeous screen siren satiny long dresses, sinuous little slip dresses, and a new iteration of the jumpsuit, conjured out of a skinny-strapped lace-edged camisole, all of which were variously worn with stacks of chunky bangles and pointy satin-y sculpted shoes.In much of his fall, Vaccarello delivered a sense of fragility, yet it was fragility armored with strength. These clothes stretch, they move, they don’t encumber. And they can, as Vaccarello so deftly demonstrates, when mixed up with filmy cardigans, tapering leather trousers and that terrific outerwear, then worn with low-heeled slingbacks, work in a real world which isn’t about putting on a show.
27 June 2024
In the end, it all goes back to Yves Saint Laurent, as Anthony Vaccarello ably demonstrated with his absolutely sublime winter men’s collection. It lowered the curtain on the fall 2024 run of shows on a chilly, damp Paris evening—and also reminded us that his menswear has really become quite the tour de force these last couple of years. Vaccarello was backstage at his show venue, the Pinault Collection, a contemporary art museum, but before that the site of the Bourse, the French stock exchange, giving a preview of the collection—just as he did only a week ago when he showed his women’s on the other side of town, on the Left Bank, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. That the timing was so close came down to, Vaccarello said, the date when he could actually use the museum for tonight’s presentation.Vaccarello’s men’s look for next winter, delicately sketched, and amplified by the way he laser focuses his storytelling with remarkable singularity, is focused on terrific, languid suits. They were as louche as they come, mostly double-breasted and so soft, and light, and undulating, you felt that at any minute they might exhale with the gentlest of sighs. That, he explained, was because the tailoring was based onflou, the historic haute couture term for making things as fluid as humanly possible. Saint Laurent himself was the king of theflou, just as much as he was of thetailleur—tailoring—the guiding principles of French fashion: Vaccarello’s clever, skillful trick here was to beautifully meld them together.“I wanted this collection to be more formal, more classic, more masculine,” he said, “perhaps in reaction to what I did the previous season. I’ve never done thefloubefore for the men’s, but I liked the idea of having this traditional suiting in these fluid, almost feminine, fabrics, like the georgette and the satin.” These last few seasons have seen him oscillate between his men’s and women’s collections, yet his approach has always been to keep the relationship between the two as subtle as possible.You could see it in the way some of his men’s color choices—mauve, tan, chocolate, rose du bois—echoed the women’s, though in turn he contrasted those against the gray flannels or spiffy chalk striped wools you might have seen on guys working at the Bourse back in the day.
Where Vaccarello played up the connection between the men’s and women’s was with his suits—he’d peppered a few through his women’s sheerfest—and his revisiting of the black rubber cabans and enveloping wool coats with their voluminous cocooning. He gave a further nod to their early ’60s inspiration by redoing the gleaming, leathery caps Saint Laurent first showed in 1963.
5 March 2024
By the sixth or seventh look, you knew Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello wasn’t going to just give us a retread of his superlative collection from last September, which was all crisp utilitarian cotton elevated to the moon and back. By the, hmm, 18th or 19th look, maybe we weren’t going to even get something that resembled a winter collection either, save for a few chicy-chic roomily cut caban jackets (based, incidentally, on Saint Laurent’s beatnik inspired coats from way back in 1962). And by the time the last model made her way around the set of two figure-of-eight interlocking circular rooms, with their green damask curtained walls flanked by De Sede’s DS-600 Canape black leather sectional sofas (dreamily comfortable, btw), the runway like a Paris street slicked with rain, and the air heavy with the delicious scent of la premiere essence d’Opium, all was clear, or perhaps more accurately, all was sheer. Almost the entirety of Vaccarello’s 48-look collection was transparent. And all made from, I kid you not, the same fabric that’s used for tights. (I am British, and simply cannot conjunctpantyandhoseinto one word. It sounds awful. Sorry.)If you’re at all interested in fashion (and the fact you’re on Vogue Runway reading this says you are) or you’ve ever scrolled through Instagram (I know:constantly), or you’ve made your own tally of who won the red carpet, then you will be all too aware that transparency has become a major,majorthing in the last few years. That it is the result of all sorts of complicated interactions between a generational embrace of body positivity, celebrity one upmanship, and a narcissistic show-offy display of one’s God (or Ozempic) given body. Every time it turns up, it’s like some kind of race to see who can bare what little is still left to bare, that it has gone as far as it surely can. Hasn’t it?Then along came Anthony Vaccarello, who turned transparency on its head, in part by giving a nod to Monsieur Saint Laurent’s own tangle with the transparent, when back in 1966 he designed a sheer blouse to much clutching of pearls. (Vaccarello had also been thinking about Marilyn Monroe in her iconic Jean Louis dress to sing JFK happy birthday in 1962.) What Vaccarello did was imbue his collection with that absolute and once radical chic, and slyly comment on how banal transparency has become in our culture, and at the same beat, seeing it anew.
For him, it was, Vaccarello said backstage, that right now there is just, “so much fashion, so many things that just lookthe same. I wanted to propose something that hadn’t been done before, that would get me excited. My job,” he continued, “isn’t always to do something that’s real or realistic.”
27 February 2024
How do you trace the thread that connects Anthony Vaccarello’s superlative tailoring for Saint Laurent from last fall—all big shoulders and, well, even bigger shoulders—to the sublimely casual insouciance of his humble cotton shirting for this coming spring? That’s where this resort offering comes in, as much a celebration of the house codes—this time round: fantastic short draped cocktailania in polka dots or colorful florals, rendered with an easy, spirited attitude—as it is a work in progress from one collection to the next.Those major jackets are now slimmed down and fitted close to the body, as close as a shirt, belted and buttoned all the way up, a glinting logo-ed buckle the only embellishment, and worn with towering metal trimmed slingback stilettos. Vaccarello might be one of the very few designers making a case for the heel in an era when low/lower/lowest has become the norm—though he endorses the notion that the best way to make a cocktail dress look 2024 is to ensure that the shoes it is worn with are as flat as the dress’s hemline is short. Also of note here: Two new (and new-ish) bag shapes—the just introduced structured high gloss Rendez-Vous shoulder bag, and from that fall 2023 collection, the soft and supple Bea—which are as practical and capacious as the clothes are streamlined and unadorned.What all this delivers is a reminder of how much Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, be it runway statement piece or rethought classic, is designed to have a wardrobe life far beyond the season from which it emanates. He gets that when it comes to Saint Laurent, newness should always be about novelty without an expiration date. Something else that’s evident: Vaccarello is building on his own legacy at the house too. Some of the standouts of the resort riff on his earlier work for the house, as well as, in fact, some of his own pre-YSL Anthony Vaccarello collections. The sinuous, almost swimwear-like, bodycon dressing, with a whiff of the minimalist ’90s, in jersey, leather, and slippery liquid satin, evokes an idea that luminous glamour should also be absolutely effortless.
15 January 2024
At Paris Fashion Week, the venues Saint Laurent erects for its women’s shows are certainly nonpareil—gigantic architectural constructs with a built-in vista calculated to appropriate the Eiffel Tower itself as a super high-prestige prop. This season’s was a mind-boggling marble platform, a momentous stage upon which Anthony Vaccarello did something unexpected: He stripped everything back.“I wanted to do almost nothing,” he’d dramatically declared backstage earlier. “I see so many complicated things, so many embroideries, so many decorative things, that I wanted to take it all off, to do no more than necessary. To make a clean canvas. Start again a new chapter for Saint Laurent.”Everything he designed—bar the mousseline eveningwear—was in cotton this season; all of it based on the Saharienne jacket—the idea that Yves Saint Laurent brought from his North African upbringing and made into revolutionary Parisian fashion in 1967. Still, even that template wasn’t simple enough for what Vaccarello wanted to do. “I took off the cross-lacing,” he noted.All that remained as detail on his rigorously edited jumpsuits, shirtdresses, and knee-length pencil skirts were sparingly spaced buttons. Vaccarello’s quite usually extensive eveningwear section—which is often almost a second show within a show—was reduced to three long mousseline dresses.“Basic” or “humble” are hardly the words for it, though. Whatever Vaccarello touches can’t help radiating the fierce, put-together Parisian glamour that Saint Laurent owns as a house. Every look came with a full ’80s maquillage, slicked hair, and giant gilt door-knocker earrings. Sharp, impenetrable conceptual aviators were worn. Brown leather gauntlets, circled with huge metal bangles, were oh-so casually shoved in pockets. Towering heels took on—yes, surely it was—the conceptual shape of the Eiffel Tower.Was this the Saint Laurent version of quiet luxury? Maybe so, but it’s hardly going to make wallflowers of Vaccarello’s women. As Diana Vreeland famously put it, “Elegance is refusal.” In times of maximalism and performative, extreme fashion made solely for one-off events, going ultrasimple and ultrachic is a sure way to stand apart from the herd.
26 September 2023
If you’ve had a hankering for big shoulders—as in really, really,reallybig—you can thank Mr. Anthony Vaccarello for that. For several seasons now, and for both the women’s and men’s collections, Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent has been pumping them way up. It’s a look that rests on a squared-off line with a lot of impact. It’s also been a neat way to underscore his and the house’s exemplary tailoring skills which are, it is safe to say, pretty darn considerable.Saint Laurent women’s pre-fall, which is arriving in stores now, sketches out the look, if in perhaps less extreme terms. There those shoulders are on masculine inflected overcoats, their swagger exaggerated by dark glasses, door knocker hoop earrings, and spike-heeled black boots. There they are again on leather and shearling jackets, some cut with a curvy blouson-y look that would have gladdened the heart of Tess McGill—”Six thousand dollars and it is leather!”—or natty aviator versions, with featherweight shawls knotted at the neck to trail in the wind, leaving everything and everyone in their wake.The high-gloss, high-power era of fashion, roughly the late ’70s to the just dawning ’90s, is something that Vaccarello’s YSL has long been tapped into. Yet his smartness with it has been to amplify the look while also denuding it of some of its associations. Yes, he might be evoking that time with his second-skin black dressing, the wrists weighted with hefty golden cuffs, or with the roomy boardroom coats over sliver-thin pencil skirts that finish a fraction above the knees. But this isn’t a historicist retreat; there’s no desire here to create clothing shellacked with outmoded notions of power and status.Instead, Vaccarello’s attitude reads as modern: a touch of dishevelment with the hair of his models, a certain androgynous beauty, a kind of casual offhandedness about the whole proceedings. Vaccarello is designing for someone who’s curious about wearing chicer, glossier, more structured clothing, but who is still firmly living in, and dressing for, the world today.Speaking of time, this collection is actually the predecessor of the chic-y chicness of his fall, which was shown in Paris a few months back.
As with all of the pre-collections calendar, there can sometimes be a bit of a Christopher Nolan syndrome going on: Did we just see that, or not? Was this first, or did it come after? Nevertheless, for all the moving back and forth, we’re never in any doubt that when it comes to Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, it is only ever about the here and now.
28 June 2023
The first signs as to where Anthony Vaccarello was going with his Saint Laurent men’s show in Berlin—a miracle of impressive tailoring broad in the shoulders and attenuated in the legs, interspersed with yet more shoulders, nakedly fragile this time, framed by gossamer silk or chiffon sleeveless shirting—was to be found on Instagram. That’s the thing with these destination shows: You tend to start sleuthing about what’s going to be on the runway before the plane has touched down on the tarmac. In the case of Saint Laurent, Vaccarello posted days before his show a brief clip of the 1950 French short film,Un Chant d’Amour, a grainy black and white ode to sensuality as much to criminality, and directed by the writer Jean Genet. Vaccarello also mentioned the name of the collection:Each Man Kills the Things He Loves.For Genet-philes (up goes my hand here) the title was, by way of Oscar Wilde, the song sung by Jeanne Moreau in a movie adaptation of one of the French writer’s great novels,Querelle de Brest. It was later filmed in 1982 by Rainer Werner Fassbinder simply asQuerelle.Et voila, there you have it: Moreau, an icon of the Frenchnouvelle vague, as Parisian as, well, Yves Saint Laurent, and Fassbinder, one of Berlin’s most legendary directors, a man who knew a thing or two about dissonant sexuality and the power between men and women as much as, well, again, Saint Laurent.Still, what Vaccarello showed this Monday evening was far, far more than a clue-laden trail of reference A to B. He himself might have Berlin as part of his own personal landscape of the past—as a student in Brussels back in the day, he would hit the city’s still-going-at-noon-the-next-day nightclubs—but in many respects, this impressive and assured outing wasn’t only about the city. Just as this past January’s show wasn’t really just about Paris or his Marrakech show in the summer of 2022 just about Morocco. Berlin is but the latest point in an ongoing design trajectory.While there might be deft and nimble references to each locale, with each carrying a certain resonance in the YSL universe, this was, once again, Vaccarello in superbly rigorous mode, an approach echoed by his choice of venue, the structural precision of the Mies van der Rohe-designed Neue Nationalgalerie. “When you leave the show, I want you to have the silhouette clearly in your head,” he said backstage.
In other words, it’s a design approach that’s thoughtful, concise, and intent on stripping away the fuss to the perfect distillation of 50 looks, exploring—and what could be more YSL than this?—the exquisite tension betweentailleur, aka suiting, andflou, all that light-as-air, fluid, sensual soft dressing, of which there was plenty in this men’s show.
12 June 2023
Elegance, that’s what Anthony Vaccarello said he was thinking about when it came to his fall 2023 collection. But here’s another ideal word for it:moment. As in: That Saint Laurent show on Tuesday night was a real…. Actually,epicwould have worked just as well here, as wouldtriumph. But in truth, all those words only make sense because of the way that Vaccarello so expertly, so confidently, so brilliantly explored his notion of elegance. “I wanted to do something around that idea, something tight and focused,” he said backstage moments before curtain up. “Maybe elegance is something we have no sense of today. Maybe we don’t care about it. Maybe it has some other meaning, or maybe it has no meaning at all. But I really wanted to bring that idea of being dressed.”And how: Every aspect of the look was considered. It was a taut, perfectly controlled vision of tailoring, riffing on the classic YSLtailleurjupe—or skirt suit, to you and me—conjured out of menswear fabrics, just as Saint Laurent himself liked to do back in the day. (Though Vaccarello said he’d also been thinking about the forever icons that are Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver inWorking Girl.) Vaccarello’s look rested on a biiigggg exaggerated shoulder jacket, cut into a classic men’s suit jacket, or smoking, or velvet blazer, over a lean skirt which finished just above the knee, a hemline that was a new length for him. These were worn with tanks as simple as cotton tees, killer patent slingbacks, weighty gilt bangles, and to a model, aviator shades; all very Helmut Newton. Sometimes the skirt was swapped for some cashmere leggings, and the jacket softened by the chiffon blouses with super-long trailing neckties trailing over the shoulders, or a shawl draped and pinned in place with more mega jewelry in the form of a gold brooch.But for all this frisson of drama, the real kicker was that Vaccarello had worked as hard on making much of this soft and malleable as he had on the construction of those shoulders; one wonders if showing directly in front of the marvel that is the Eiffel Tower season after season has driven him to outdo its incredible feat of engineering. (This shoulder line was, he said, the most difficult yet to achieve, it all comes down to the way it has to be balanced by the sleeve, apparently.) For all their monumentality, the jackets themselves were relatively light, and the soft knit pieces voided any notion of stiffness.
That softer touch was evident too in the smattering of evening that Vaccarello offered; a gorgeous diaphanous black lace and velvet banded camisole with a black sheer skirt, or any one of the draped and wrapped tops—one looked like a deconstructed smoking—worn with yet more of those leggings.
28 February 2023
Long, tall, lean, chic. Those were the words that spontaneously shot to mind while Anthony Vaccarello was sending out a menswear collection that swept away the gendering of clothes with every passing flick of its floor-grazing coat-tails.At Saint Laurent, it was instantly very clear: Vaccarello has been building on the dramatically attenuated silhouettes that have been striding out at his women’s collections recently, and their transference into menswear is now complete. “I really want them to be almost one person,” he said. “So women could be the men, and the men could be the women. No difference. I want more and more to put them at the same level. No distinction.”While the audience reclined on a circular banquette, sipping Champagne at the perimeter of a beige center-stage—this much was almost pure Tom Ford for Saint Laurent era decadence—it was equally apparent that Vaccarello was speaking about his idea of what drop-dead elegance means to people of his own generation. In material terms, that translates to dark, vertical, narrow coats; black leather and velvet; necks exaggeratedly tied in flourishing bows or sunk funnel-necks; the cool, tailored swagger of Smoking jackets, the cache-coeur drape of tops and chest-revealing cowl-front silk shirts that plunge into wrapped cummerbunds.Whereas what was for “her” was pioneeringly co-opted from “him” by Yves Saint Laurent in the 1960s and ’70s, now Vaccarello has reversed the process in the 2020s. Of course, the codes of the house offer endless gifts to play with on the menswear scale: patent block heels, adaptations of the pussy-bow see-through chiffon blouse, a hint of the North African draped hood. Vaccarello did all that, with a confidence and conviction that is all his own.What’s progressive about it is the way he’s pushed past anything that might be categorized as “blurry,” “fluid” or “neutral.” In the bigger scheme of fashion, his contribution is bringing exactly the opposite qualities to rethinking clothes and gender: what Vaccarello deals in is rigor, precision, and a brilliant ability to cut. It was a true Saint Laurent on-brand orchestration, for sure, but a resonantly relevant step forward for the designer too.
17 January 2023
Bring it on, 2023. OK, I say that, but let’s put a few conditions on that statement, fashion-wise at least. Bring it on by all means, but maybe without the recent penchant for brutal trends, microtrends, or trends with absolutely any prefix at all. Don’t know about you, but the eye—my eye, I am talking about here—is being drawn to, and is staying fixed on, clothes which carry some resonance of longevity, of non-disposability, and of joy from their creation and making. I have absolutely no evidence for this statement, to be totally honest, but I am thinking that Anthony Vaccarello of Saint Laurent might be feeling the exact same way.I am basing this statement on the strength of his (and by that I mean: very strong) spring 2023 collection. The familiar made new, the new made familiar, and in a palette that’s the definition of classic—ivory, sand, gold, earth brown, and black, with the occasional splashes of teal blue, burnt orange, and blush pink, and all worn with elegant spike-heeled slingbacks or diamanté ankle strap sandals. (Oh, and tons of substantial dark shades. Don’t know why I find this so particularly alluring, but it just is. Then I do come from a generation which wore sunglassesout to nightclubs.)All the YSL-isms are here, but adjusted because Vaccarello has that ineffable way of remaking their proportions to feel totally right for the moment we’re in: the shoulderline of a smoking given a distinctive jut; pants cut with a killer flare from the knees, a slink in every step; and, Saint Laurent’s eternal columnar evening getting a scissoring to make it resonate with Gen H(ailey Bieber) 24/7, the archetypal slim dress transformed into a crop top and a sinuous skirt. Another YSL-ism of yore got a cool refresh too: the drapedcocktailaniaof Monsieur Saint Laurent’s ’80s and ’90s reinvented into tiny dresses and just as tiny bodysuits. (And a deft reminder of how Vaccarello has been busy putting his own spin on drapery for some time now: Consider those catsuits from a few seasons back, easily as hyper-glam as the most statement-y nighttime looks, only more connected to the here and now.)For Vaccarello, his spring and fall collections have been the link, the curtain opener or closer, as it were, on his summer and winter shows, and it’s always intriguing to see how the former link and flow into the latter.
Spring has plenty of that going on: a trench thrown over an ankle length dress evokes last winter, while the long minimalistic lines of the jersey dresses are a precursor to his big bold shouldered summer. But what resonates here, what gets that eye fixated on the proceedings, is how this collection tackles the twin pillars that the house of YSL was built on, the mid-century couture-era codes oftailleur(tailoring) andflou(anything soft and/or floaty), that are the very guiding principles of French fashion.Vaccarello gives the collision of those two approaches a veryhimspin: Gorgeously frothy chiffon dresses, with flouncing hems come with cabans embellished with blowsy blooms, or beaten-up leather bomber jackets. Heritage, tradition, and craft, but handled with a snap and crackle: 2023, that’s the way to bring it on.
9 January 2023
“To me, the body says what words cannot,” Martha Graham, the revered, radical American modern dancer and choreographer, once said. It wouldn’t be crazy to think that’s the kind of statement Anthony Vaccarello of Saint Laurent would concur with. His work for the house has always exalted a corporeal glory; his own view of physicality—strong, celebratory, unapologetic—and the legacy of the house merged to be totally in sync.Graham’s and Vaccarello’s orbits surprisingly spun into each other at his spring 2023 show, which was staged in the almost dreamlike Parisian setting of a grand paved garden replete with a cascading fountain that Marcel Carné would have been thrilled to have filmed upon. (The set was built especially for the show, sweeping staircases, perfectly laid flagstones, and all.) The result: a quietly epic examination of what happens when you both reveal and conceal the body—and the frisson you generate when you make your look long, lean, and loaded with attitude.Backstage, just before the show, Vaccarello mentioned that he’d been looking at the groundbreaking way that Graham dressed her company in tubular dresses for her 1930 productionLamentation, costuming which audaciously emphasized every bit of physical agility from her dancers. Vaccarello first discovered Graham, he said laughing, by being a fan of Madonna’s in the 1990s, when the Material Girl had been busy (rightly) singing Graham’s praises to the sky. But for spring Vaccarello looked back a decade earlier to YSL’s past—the mid-’80s days when models strode those old-school elevated podiums in Monsieur Saint Laurent’s hooded, draped capuche dresses. They were visions of languid elegance, dressed to the nines with myriad jeweled accessories, the maquillage as immaculate as the hauteur they were so gifted at projecting.Vaccarello riffed on all the draping and hoods for a slew of beautifully rendered dresses cut from jersey in two different weights: one heavier and opaque, giving a more constructed look; the other lighter and gauzier, gently—and barely—veiling the body underneath. Some of these dresses were slipped under sweeping great coats and trenches—which fell in narrow columnar proportions from big shoulders in leather, tweed, or wool—or paired with more leather in the form of capacious blouson jackets that nipped inwards as their cut moved toward the waist.
(Vaccarello deftly mimicked the silhouette and made it more day with a draped sweater with a hood over tapering track pants—and in contrast, loosened everything up with a series of terrific pajama suits, the standout in ivory polka dots on black.)
27 September 2022
Come for the spectacle, stay for the clothes. That’s the best way to think about Anthony Vaccarello’s tour de force spring 2023 menswear show. He wisely knew when to turn things up to high drama level—and when to turn them way down so that what he showed, his best men’s collection yet, felt intimate and real and strong. Of course, the setting helped. Vaccarello had decamped to the Agafay desert, an hour or so out of Marrakech. It’s a city with real significance to Yves Saint Laurent the man (he had two homes here, most famously Villa Oasis, nestling beside the Majorelle Garden) and the brand (Marrakech is the location of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent). And then factor in the show’s mise en scène: an epic and haunting circular light show installation designed by artist and set designer Es Devlin, which rose up from a mirage pond, and was erected atop the moonlike terrain.Still, a cinematic setting doesn’t mean a whole lot if the clothes can’t live up to it. And here was Vaccarello’s master stroke: Present a collection which he said, just before the show, was, “for the first time, my most personal. It’s maybe less, let’s say costume-y, than it could have been in the past.” Vaccarello looked back 20 years to when he was a student in Brussels at the La Cambre art school, a time when the tautly drawn lines of Belgian noir were omnipresent in fashion. It gave a defined tailored silhouette, to be sure, but one with a softness and a crumpled sense of being loveworn. Vaccarello took his own sartorial impulses from his earlier years—“It was how I dressed in 2000. It was a look that I loved, and I wanted to recreate that spirit; I was missing that”—and married them beautifully to the classic codes of YSL.Trenchcoats came sharply shouldered but with a beguiling fluidity to their silhouette, cut with a barely perceptible flutter to them, in black wool or pliable glove-like leather. Lanky pants started high at the waist then fell into an easier, wider stride, some with a satin-y tux stripe running down the leg, or styled like jeans but cut from the most luscious of velvets, both often partnered with delicate gauzy tops that clung to the torso.
15 July 2022
Anyone who thinks that Catherine Deneuve got all the best looks in Luis Bunuel’s magnificent 1967 magnum opusBelle de Journeeds to feast their eyes on Anthony Vaccarello’s fall men’s for Saint Laurent. One of the starting points for his collection, a fabulously cool and glam after-dark affair, was Deneueve’s lover in the movie, Marcel. He was handsome and brooding (so far, so good) albeit a psychotic criminal (uh-oh, why is there always a downside with the hotties?), and played by French bad boy actor Pierre Clementi. “The androgyne leather trench, the gold teeth…everything was done by Bunuel in this movie,” says Vaccarello.In addition to the aforementioned trench, Marcel also had a penchant for razor sharp tailoring loosened up with a littleraffinédishevelment; his not-quite-undone-yet-undone necktie and rumpled collar is pure fuck-it chic. Both coat and suiting get a subtle yet alluring makeover by Vaccarello. His sinuous tailoring, all confident shoulders and pants cut with the barest hint of volume, come in that most nighttime (and most YSL) of fabrics, velvet, re-invented for 24/7 in shades of forest green and burgundy. The trench, meanwhile, is slicked up in gleaming patent, its line kept close to the body, and tautly and strictly belted.To amplify the coat’s high gloss sheen, Vaccarello put it on a model with a sweeping platinum coif, giving a sly wink back toBelle de Jourbut in a whole other way. The effect of coat plus hair is redolent of the hyper blonde Deneuve in her own gleaming trench, which she wore whilecinq a septwas keeping her in gainful if illicit employment—a coat, like all of her costumes, designed by Yves Saint Laurent himself.It’s just one of the ways that Vaccarello has of late compellingly riffed on gender interchangeability, viewing the vast legacy of the house of Saint Laurent as fair game for any and all sexes. It’s especially good when he’s riffing on themaison’s icons, which are used to strong effect here, with terrific renderings of tuxes, (faux) fur chubbies, capes, and the iconic cocoon coats of YSL’s earliest days, their elegance of line, so long associated with quote-unquote femininity, subverted garçon style with lean kicky pants and rocker-ish boots—boots, incidentally, which often finish at the knees and rest on high heels.
14 June 2022
“I never gave up on being dressed, even when the trend was about sportswear,” says Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello of his fall women’s collection, the until-now-unseen curtain raiser to his epic Paris by way of Belgium barnstormer of a winter show, presented earlier this year. “I am glad that people want to dress up again, because for me nothing has changed.”Never let it be said that Vaccarello doesn’t have unerring instincts. When the rest of the world was letting it all hang out while being holed up at home, he was showing hyper-colored tweedy suits dripping with jewels on an icy tundra redolent ofGame of Thrones, or had marabou and pop-floral chiffon marching across a vast Sahara-like vista; big themes, big landscapes, big drama. In their way they were as much paeans to hope for the future as statements of intent about how you might want to dress in the present.Except change was to a degree part of the narrative: Vaccarello also took on board the prevailing desire for comfort and ease, he just didn’t do it in the obvious, cliched or—heaven forbid—un-YSL of ways; there were modern compact jerseys and fluid silks to move in and to feel free in. This fall collection builds on that as much as planting the seeds for the aforementioned winter, which he describes as “lots of volumes, more rounded shapes, a bit of Art Deco, a bit ’90s and a bit of Poiret.” His trick is to take all of that and work it through some of the classic Saint Laurent-isms. The columnar line for evening that Yves loved so much now looks perfect for daytime, partnered with a tough belted leather jacket and an armful of bangles. The iconicle smokingalso makes it to the other side of the dawn, as an eased up suit, a cape, or a sharp-shouldered coat.Those are just some of the strong outerwear statements on show here: oversized faux furs, cozily chic but with a casual flick-the-collar-up attitude; voluminous-shouldered cocoon coats and nifty leather trenches thrown over some particularly ravishing slithery lingerie slip dresses, a hint of romanticism given by their guipure or frothy lace edges.
Finishing all this off: stretch velvet high-heeled boots; gilt-trimmed square-toed pumps, an update on the Roger Vivier design of yore; and frame topped handbags, their elegance making a strong case for perhaps finally giving up on capacious bags which received wisdom says are more practical, but really, take a look inside—how much are you lugging around you don’t really need?But back to what you might need—or want, or desire. Fashion’s winners these days are the names and labels and brands who’re walking the tightrope while balancing Big Fashion Statement, what we used to call The Dream, and an undeniable grounding in reality. Vaccarello is walking that pretty nimbly these days, getting on with it and also getting the kind of numbers for the house which suggests it’s really connecting. Like I said: Instincts.
14 June 2022
It was the most lingeringly memorable show of Anthony Vaccarello’s career. Sophisticated, sinuous, simple: it had almost a throwback ’90s Belgian coolness about its long, narrowly languid silhouettes, the covered arms, the subtly strict use of color.What will be remembered most? Purely the sight of a woman in a long, silvery bias-cut dress, with a perfect black low-buttoned double-breasted black peacoat over it, her hands thrust into the pockets. She opened the show. And then the line-up of flawless black tuxedos and a single, narrow black tux coat which came at the end.Of course, there was a lot more in between: fake fur coats and bombers; amazing overcoats with big (not too big) shoulders; narrow leather coats; elegantly nonchalant cocoon-back profiles. Then the punctuation of something as simple as an ecru floor-length turtle neck T-shirt dress, worn with deep stacks of dark wood and silver bangles on each arm. And the high glamour of ’30s/’80s evening jackets with big bands of faux fur running around them.More than anything, all of this went to show how Vaccarello has got himself in charge of the Yves Saint Laurent aesthetic, relaxed into it. That’s no mean feat—the sheer magnitude and magnificence of Saint Laurent’s oeuvre is mightily intimidating. In the face of it, the temptation as a designer is either to rebel against it with super-short shorts, slit skirts, breast-exposure and everything Saint Laurent didn’t do (which Vaccarello did at one time) or to just be too reverential. What the job really calls for is someone who knows enough about the playbook of Saint Laurent to be able to honor its quality, but also has enough confidence to be nonchalant about using it.Vaccarello hit that point of maturity with this show. In his own accent, with his own taste. With, yes, maybe something of his Belgian-born sensibility coming through: vague echoes of that period of deconstructed minimalism, the monochrome colors, saving the air of being easy to wear, but then again, bringing it up to the level of the modern Parisian elegance that we all dream about.There was a lot of talk about it after the show; how it turned a corner away from overt sexiness, away from flash and embellishment and micro this and that, and painfully high shoes. Sometimes there are turns in the road that leave people feeling things are really changing in fashion. This collection felt like one of those.
1 March 2022
Let me just say this: I don’t really know exactly how the women depicted in Anthony Vaccarello’s spring 2022 Saint Laurent collection images are living in the world, but however they are, please, please, please, just sign me up to exist the same way.It’s free-spirited: There’s a terrific, go-with-the-flow vibe going on here, all high-waisted, floor-sweeping flares, feathers a go-go, flower power sequins, and hippie headbands; kind of Avenue Montaigne goes to Haight-Ashbury—or vice versa. It’s liberated: There’s a confident, palpable sense of sexual empowerment, with LBDs and not so little LBDs bearing all manner of cut-outs and cut-aways, breast-veiling, and other forms of transparency. (Smart of Vaccarello to showcase much of this on his long-time friend and house icon Anja Rubik, who has become a fearless advocate for women’s sexual and reproductive rights back home in her native Poland.)Oh, and it’s absolutely impeccable: Over the last few seasons, Vaccarello has been channeling all of his scalpel sharp cutting skills of yore, often used for the tiniest of dresses, into his version of YSL’s archetypal tailoring. Consider the way he handles the sort of classique pinstripe suiting that Yves himself did back in the day. It is still as tautly and slickly sketched out as ever before, but also soft and malleable enough that a double-breasted blazer can be worn tucked into a pair of belted pleat-front pants. (Plus, can we talk about the line of those jeans by Vaccarello, as rigorously finessed here as any other piece of tailoring?)This particular collection hasn’t had a public showing until now, but the corresponding men’s did, presented last summer in Venice, in one of those brief windows where we were traveling a bit more freely, as if the sun had suddenly popped out from behind the clouds over the Grand Canal. That show was a joyous exploration of male sexualities through some of the house’s most female-identified codes. This time round, you could argue, it’s the reverse; a mirroring of how much the identity of YSL women’s was forged through menswear. There’s definitely a heady whiff of those androgynous days when Yves Saint Laurent and muse Betty Catroux shared the same plunge-front shirted, narrow-hipped tailored approach to getting dressed.
That was back in the late ’60s/early ’70s, an era iconic to YSL, in which gender fluidity was just one way the old order (all those boring bourgeois constraints and mores) was rightly collapsing from the challenges thrown down by emancipation, counter-culture, and more bohemian ways of living. Vaccarello isn’t the type to talk endlessly about politics in his work, if ever, but politics are there, without a doubt. What he’s offering here is a clear and confident vision of dressing for a world today that’s equally in flux (and one hopefully moving towards a better future). And it resonates and crackles with the best of the past reimagined for the present.
11 January 2022
Since COVID upended everything, Anthony Vaccarello had chosen to present his Saint Laurent collections via the medium of film, using spectacular natural settings, from sand dunes to glaciers, as his backdrops. Not so tonight. We’re back to Paris, baby! Vaccarello’s powerful and uncompromising spring collection was once again shown within twinkling distance of the Eiffel Tower. (A roar came from the crowd when it lit up.) Still, he hasn’t entirely given up on the idea of drawing on the elements. For one thing, the show was held outside, on a cool darkening evening, and for another, there was the impossible to miss thundering waterfall which cascaded down the pyrotechnic light display at the finale.That wasn’t the only force of nature Vaccarello had on his mind. Central to this collection was the incomparable Paloma Picasso, a Renaissance woman who, in her heyday, was as happy in a branché nightclub as she was in an artist’s studio. Or, for that matter, a designer’s atelier: Years ago, Pierre Bergé acknowledged Picasso’s pivotal role in shaking Monsieur Saint Laurent out of the lethargic and moribund world of haute couture, electrifying him into taking new risks. That role was somewhat lost to history until tonight, when Vaccarello celebrated her legacy in audacious and fabulous style. He brought the sketch of her trademark look—the dark hair, the scarlet lips, the masc/femme contrast, the clash of the opulent and the low down—firmly into today. “She projected a glamorous toughness,” Vaccarello said at a preview a few days before the show. “And it was a way for her to move through the world and hold her own.”Much of this collection wrested on masculine-inflected tailoring, pace Picasso. Vaccarello’s jackets, with their broad shoulders which took months to perfect, were divine, and made even more so by the proportional juxtaposition of their three-quarter-length sleeves; the precision of the shape, said Vaccarello, was “to fix all those oversized jackets I am tired of seeing on Instagram; just to show what a well-cut jacket is.” Sometimes this tailoring was worn with lanky high-waisted jeans or tight pants cut from spandex, other times it morphed into jumpsuits, yet it was always accessorized with Pop Art bright leather gloves, a sunken galleon’s worth of ritzy jewelry, and the Tribute platform newly reborn in black patent leather. (BTW: Jeans and jewels are looking great again; ditto those platforms.)
28 September 2021
Venice in a world of reemergence is, if possible, even more miraculous than ever, with dolphins sighted gamboling in the laguna and very few tourists around to admire them. Triumphantly, that fragile lagoon was recently declared a national monument, and at the same time the Italian government finally announced a ban on the controversial cruise ships that overpowered the city while seeming to bring it little financial benefit.With the city’s winding lanes and piazzas relatively empty, and even the pavilions in the Giardini, (hosting national offerings for the Venice Architecture Biennale uniting under the themeHow Will We Live Together?) not exactly overwhelmed with visitors, an army of very slender wraiths, confettied with tattoos, bristling with attitude, and wafting around the city’s fabled landscape, seemed even more conspicuous. These proved to be the models and brand icons of Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, in town to walk, stomp, twirl, and glide the runway in the designer’s persuasively eclectic collection (although body diversity, it seems, is not yet a part of the dialogue in the menswear realm).In keeping with the city’s current focus on the possibilities of architecture, Vaccarello collaborated with the genre defying artist and filmmaker Doug Aitken (who won the International Prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale) on an environment to showcase his collection. Aitken createdGreen Lens, an amazing mirror-faceted structure that was assembled in a month on the Isola della Certosa, and planted with hot house jungle greenery. It serves as a response to the question posed by the Biennale, harmoniously blending futurism with the natural landscape.“All the sets of Saint Laurent I’ve always done myself in a way,” Vaccarello explained, at the magical post-show dinner set in the roofless ruin of an old brick structure on the island, “so it was nice to share a concept for the first time with an artist who I truly admire, and it was fun. That concept was supposed to be for the women’s show last year,” Vaccarello added, “and because of the pandemic we pushed it to now. In the end it made more sense to have it in Venice than in Paris, especially with the Architecture Biennale—and with that collection, which is a mix of a lot of influence of Saint Laurent and a lot of Venetian ‘New Romanticism.’ Not putting them into the historical, classical Venetian way, but in a futuristic environment.
I think after COVID you want to look more into the future than the past—and I like that mix of the past in the references in the clothes, and the future in the setting.” During the fast-paced show the structure reflected the blue skies, dusk light, and dappled lagoon waters while Aitken’s lighting transformed the mood from moment to moment, suggesting by turns a flaming sunset or a glacial blue Scandinavian dawn. Refracted in those mirrors, Vaccarello’s tribe strode forth in lean jackets or billowing piratical blouses (think Adam Ant and Britain’s early 1980s New Romantics), and cigarette-leg pants with winkle picker ankle boots extending the slender silhouette further still.
15 July 2021
In the topsy-turvy, which-season-are-we-looking-at-now way of the world today, Anthony Vaccarello’s YSL fall women’s is now being unveiledafterthe winter 2021 collection that will follow it in stores. The latter was presented a month or so ago as a spectacular filmic odyssey through some of the vastest, most awe-inducing landscapes Mother Nature has blessed us with. In presenting this collection, Vaccarello stays much closer to home for his backdrop—namely, a series of images taken in the courtyard of the imposing YSL HQ on Rue de l’Université on Paris’s Left Bank.It’s a neat reminder that however far you take Saint Laurent in the world, no matter what you project about one of fashion’s most iconic maisons, everything always has to bring you back home. For Vaccarello, this fall is another of his thoughtful forensic-like examinations of the legacy and heritage of YSL, which he then takes and makes resonant and meaningful for today. In his hands, that means less precious but no less refined; a casual imprint on even the most formal of looks. What results are clothes imbued with an alluring patina of age and lived experience.A case in point: Vaccarello’s “opening” look, a gorgeously tailored jacket, very ’80s YSL. He makes it part rural fantasia—a tweedy check so countrified you can almost hear the clip-clop of hooves in the stables—and part urban cool, the shape more shrug-it-on that buttoned-up BCBG. That jacket gets partnered with more checked pieces: a low-fastened shirt, a glimpse of gold jewelry flashing from underneath; pants tucked into long wader-like black leather boots reminiscent of those Monsieur Roger Vivier designed for Monsieur Saint Laurent way back when.In essence, that’s Vaccarello’s narrative here. Take the YSL-isms—the mannish trench, the silky blouse, the jaunty culotte, the fluffy chubby, the lace hosiery that’s as dark as midnight—and recontextualize every single last one of them. That comes from pairing them with faded jeans cut lean with a kick at the ankles; black or gray leather shorts; and vintage-y vests and belted short coats. And it most definitely comes from the newest iteration of Vaccarello’s perennial long-legged silhouette: a hybrid of pant and boot in denim or ivory glove leather or, in a daring rethink of evening, in gleaming black vinyl worn with a ruffle-bibbed white tuxedo shirt.In the end, though, what’s going on here isn’t just a meditation on the here and now of the Saint Laurent legacy.
It also captures the place we’re all at now, more or less: caught somewhere between the big, wide world and the refuge of home. We’re yearning for structure, but freedom; comfort, but not sloppiness; dressing up but not in a way which looks like we’re trapped in an existence that doesn’t acknowledge the last year-plus we’ve all lived through. With this collection, Vaccarello signposts how we might live between both.
14 June 2021
It’s pretty certain (total understatement here) that what I’m about to say wasn’t anywhere near Anthony Vaccarello’s mind when he was designing his new men’s Saint Laurent collection, but by Look 6 I was back in Paris on my very first trip to the city in the spring of 1988: a penniless student who pressed his face up against the windows of just about every boutique the length and breadth of the Avenue Montaigne. (Other memories of that trip: going clubbing, then walkingmiles—excuse me,kilometres—back to a grotty, disgusting one-star hotel in the then unglamorous 9eme, the memory of which serves as a reminder that there is a reason there are no zero star hotels.)What set off this Proustian-like reminiscing? The sharp and confident way Vaccarello riffs on the ’80s here, grasping that the best way to reimagine those years is through the earlier decades that hung over them stylistically. The ’80s were very often a cooler-than-thou sampling of the 1950s (bomber jackets and beat-up denim) and the 1960s (the precision of lean, snappy Mod/garage band suiting) souped up with some New Wave attitude. (As in: right out of famed NYC nightclub Danceteria as much as the handsome anti-heroes ofLa Nouvelle Vague, both of which Vaccarello seemed to reference here.) Yet despite the decade-ism, his trick is to play the cards of historical reference with a winning hand; the past is only drawn on to make clothes designed for the present.In translation, that means the following: There are plenty of perfect close-fit zip-up leather jackets, some seamed and grooved as shiny and beguiling as any unplayed vinyl 7-inch you’re dying to hear, others aged to look better than any vintage find you’d ever score. Those are often worn with straight-cut black jeans or his new fluid-yet-slim pants, both of whose hems race towards the ankles. Newer still, Vaccarello offers up tapering, zippered leather track pants, more Kraftwerk than workout. Elsewhere, there’s a strong outerwear statement: Cut with equal swagger and skinniness, the coats’ lapels are pinned with badges and brooches that have the declarative flourish of an exclamation mark.There’s even (though excuse me, this might be my nostalgia playing tricks on me) sly, witty winks to the Pompidou Centre, which opened in 1977 just as punk arrived to smash up the system, and which 11 years later I stood in front of, slack-jawed in wonder.
The Pompidou’s postmodernist primary colored exoskeleton is reminiscent of the red/yellow/blue lines which Vaccarello runs down a scarf, or mottled and morphed into some particularly good sweaters and cardigans patterned with an au courant ’80s graphic abstraction. The latter are just some of the many terrific knits on offer here. When the cozy glow of nostalgia fades—and let’s be honest, it needs to; life is at its best when it’s lived forward—they’ll offer a far better way to keep warm many months from now.
14 June 2021
So what came first with Anthony Vaccarello’s epic (in all senses of the word) winter 2021? The collection or the location where it was filmed? If your answer is the latter, then well done: You win! Against the most jaw-dropping of backdrops, with sheer-drop cliff faces, crashing waves, and a beach that shimmers like diamonds on slate at night, Vaccarello’s gals, quite possibly the most badass—and besuited and bejeweled—rock chicks ever, are shown striding as if on some fantastic odyssey.“When I was thinking about this collection, I had this place in mind, like a movie director,” Vaccarello said on a call to preview his collection. “It’s the idea of a girl in a landscape where she doesn’t belong. I knew I wanted a wintry location,” he went on to say, “one which showed how strong nature is; how we are really nothing next to it, how ephemeral we are. It’s not a place where anyone is going skiing, but Saint Laurent should do something that’s like a dream: What theF?! Why is she there?”The question of why this winter’s Saint Laurent woman is indeed there is left hanging somewhere in the movie’s moody overcast skies, but no matter; that’s only a positive. Every season Vaccarello’s exploration of the YSL archive has a welcome air of mystery to it; there has never been any literal, first-degree rehashing of the back catalog’s greatest hits on his watch. (And that’s not all that’s mysterious, by the way; Vaccarello laughed off every attempt to reveal the film’s magical location.)This time round, he was drawn to Monsieur Saint Laurent’s classically elegant mid ’60stailleursrendered in menswear fabrics; just the kind of thingBellewore when she started working duringdu Jour. He ratcheted up the cool factor by cutting the jackets lean and sinuous and then matching the length of their hems to his skirts. (Yep, they’re short.) Then he swapped out Saint Laurent’s then preferred monochromatic palette with a fabulously opulent and in your face array of violet, cobalt, gold, and chartreuse: “It’s the shapes of the ’60s with the colors of the ’80s,” Vaccarello said by way of explanation.Finishing the looks off, he slipped gleaming metallic stretch bodysuits or the tiniest of leather miniskirts under the tailoring. Then he loaded up on thebijoux, great gleaming gorgeous fistfuls of the stuff; chandelier earrings, strasse bracelets, and chokers with a four-leaf-clover motif, something else sourced from the archive.
It would be remiss not to mention the ultra-long leather boots (shades of very early YSL, when he was in his Beat phase) or the wickedly pointy metal-tipped heels. Watching Mica Argañaraz navigate a stony cliff edge in them like she’s wearing sneakers gives a whole new meaning to the appellation “rock goddess.”
28 April 2021
Even the most epic of journeys has to begin somewhere. Ask Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello, who last December unveiled his terrific spring 2021 collection via a movie of models walking in single file across shimmering and striated sand dunes which stretched (it appeared) into infinity. Now the house has released images of its spring 2021 pre-collection. Arriving in stores at any minute, it’s the curtain raiser on what we were treated to at the end of last year; the starting point for that desert odyssey of ’60s-meets-’90s molded longer line jackets, low-slung and slouchy pants, compact knit jumpsuits, short skirts, and lingerie looks which walked on the (tongue in chic) wild side as much as they did grains of sand. “I worked on spring during the confinement, so I was inspired by the idea of easy and more comfortable clothes which I continued in the pre-collection,” says Vaccarello.A gimlet eye can detect how Vaccarello is kick-starting his spring line-up with this pre-collection. Next summer’s longer jacket is rendered here as a nifty double-breasted blazer, cut with the samemasculin/fémininattitude of YSL of yore, and paired with fluid, high-waisted/high-cut shorts. That glorious Frederick’s of Hollywood vibe lingerie begins here with an armoire’s worth of lace and silk camisoles and slips, executed with the kind of vintage-y perfection that you’d only ever find in your dreams (or Kate Moss’s wardrobe, circa 1996). Their fretted delicacy lends a bit of softness to the likes of faded blue jeans, gilt-button cable-knit cardigans, and yet more of those shorts, cut from gleaming pliant leather. In other words: Why bother with a T-shirt when you could be wearing a camisole instead?You might also see why the house held off showing this pre-collection until now. I mean, why spoil the surprise of seeing Vaccarello take on prints for Saint Laurent—a first for him, and deftly handled. There are pop-art blooms, a very Parisian matrix of polka dots, and a graphic daisy motif sourced from the house’s archive, which has more than a distinct whiff of those moments when Monsieur Saint Laurent riffed on the ’40s from the perspective of the ’70s. (Vaccarello gives his own nod to that decade mash-up, with several looks paired with his update of platform sandals which are redolent of Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic—and at the time, super controversial—ode to the 1940s that he showed in 1971.)
18 January 2021
This past February, Anthony Vaccarello showed a stellar Saint Laurent collection of slick, strong-shouldered tailoring and even slicker latex on a runway the color of sun-bleached sand. Maybe the set was meant to evoke the desert landscapes of North Africa, a region the house has long had an association with—Monsieur Saint Laurent was born in Algeria—but it also made one hell of a backdrop for Vaccarello’s radical (and ravishing) reimagining of the classic YSL color palette of emerald, fuchsia, lipstick red, et al. Now 10 life-changing months later, and Vaccarello has returned to the dunes to present summer 2021. More than a neat visual through line between the collections, it’s a link connecting where we were and where we are. I mean, sands of time, anyone?There’s no elaborate show in Paris this time, though. Instead, it’s a hypnotic film by longtime creative accomplice Nathalie Canguilhem of models walking in a snaking single file across striated sandbanks in…well, who knows where, exactly? On a call with Vaccarello a few days ago, he wasn’t letting on. Suffice to say that the panoramic vista as far as the eye (well, the camera) can see performed a similar trick here as it did in February: an uninterrupted backdrop the better to showcase his new streamlined silhouette. Next summer’s collection is a terrific exercise in chic, but one with a kicker; it’s also surprisingly soft, hard edges rounded off, save for the punk-ish/puckish haircuts of the models. There’s a general air of giving, relaxing, sometimes even playfulness—but nothingtooloose. (I mean, come on, this is Vaccarello, who cuts a lean line like no other.)The months of life in and out of lockdown—le confinément—with the attendant desire for clothes with ease and softness didn’t leave Vaccarello untouched. “With everything that was going on in the world, I wanted something softer, warmer,” he said during that phone call from Paris. “I’ve never really done ‘comfortable’ before.” He found his answer to how to approach it by delving into the YSL archives, alighting in his usual resolutely left-field and non-historicist way on the fluid, pliable jersey dressing that Saint Laurent did in 1968.As with today, it was another era where the strictures of fashion’s past were being blown away—YSL launched his revolutionary Rive Gauche prêt-à-porter that same year—when people were taking to the streets to protest. Movement met movement. “That jersey...it kept its shape but didn’t constrain,” Vaccarello says.
“I wanted to speak to the comfort of the ’60s and to the comfort of today.” The fusion of the two eras—well, three actually; there’s also a healthy dose of the stripped-down late ’90s at work here, more of which later—can be seen in the mix of Vaccarello’s Nehru-collared belted jackets worn with bike shorts (hello, Peloton!), the minimal new suiting of a tunic and pants with a flick at their hems, and the graphic jumpsuits.
15 December 2020
If you can’t go to Hawaii, then where do you go? That was the challenge that Anthony Vaccarello faced when deciding where (and how) to show his spring 2021 collection for Saint Laurent. Plan A had been to show at one of the Pacific Ocean’s idyllic locales, but the harsh reality of COVID confronted Vaccarello, just as it has done everyone else, forcing him to come up with Plan B. Vaccarello’s solution: Present the collection in a dizzyingly fast and breathtakingly choreographed short film, which sweeps across Paris, Beijing, and New York. (And like any movie, has been teased with billboards and posters.) The locations switch from the Sacre Coeur to mega-skyscrapers shadowing the Chinese capital to the Brooklyn Bridge before ending on a pyrotechnic walkway constructed on the sparkling Eiffel Tower, because everything Saint Laurent does always comes back to Paris. It’s a film that leaps around—quite literally.Joining Vaccarello’s usual cast of rakishly cool/real guys—wearing blousons traced with leafy fronds, hibiscus-print shirts, a new long tunic-y shirting idea that’s a deft proportions shifter, and soft pants tailored to a perfect degree of fluidity, all with rope-strap sandals or basket-weave loafers—are several roof-jumping daredevils. They leap across the gaping chasms between high-rise buildings like you and I might cross the road. Word of warning: If you have even the slightest hint of vertigo (hand raised here) some of the shots, incredible though they are, might have you gripping the edge of your seat to a white-knuckle level.For all the drama of Vaccarello’s runway presentations—peerlessly matched here by this film, directed by Nathalie Canguilhem—he can be equally subtle and reflective in his approach. Once the movie’s adrenaline rush has passed, it is clear that there was a quiet precision to the choice of locations; they map out the terrible and inexorable way the coronavirus moved around the world. The destinations underscore the point that despite our globally shared pain and confinement, creativity still flourishes, and it can still deliver the promise of better days ahead.Vaccarello has been performing his own high-wire act with considerable skill and aplomb for Saint Laurent; an understanding that when you take on the house you need to sift through the myth and the fantasy to find the realism that lies beneath. With spring 2021, he remains intent on fine-tuning his garderobe for Saint Laurent.
He’s working on the rationale that, he says, “I don’t like the idea of doing a revolutionary wardrobe every season. For me, you can mix this collection with the one I did in Malibu last year or the one I showed overlooking Manhattan in 2018.”
9 September 2020
Drawing on the heady days of the Beat counterculture of New York (and cities far beyond—those Beats were forever on the road) hasn’t proved to be an existential crisis for Anthony Vaccarello. There’s plenty in his fall 2020 Saint Laurent men’s collection that’s cool and covetable in his wink to that era. Those two qualities play strongly in this late-’50s-/early-’60s-influenced offering for one reason: the off-kilter classicism of pairing an impeccably tailored jacket with a beaten-up pair of jeans.Vaccarello’s simultaneous elevation of craft and realism resonates despite–or perhaps because of—our collective experience of life these last few months. “Even with what happened to the world,” he said, “I think [this look] is always relevant as [it’s] a simple and functional silhouette.” Here’s the gist of it. Take a jacket, in worsted wool or muted plaid, and shape the shoulders so that they’re perfectly straight—“épaule carrée,” Vaccarello dubs it—and then sit them higher and padded, the jacket’s lean shape amplified by the shoulder line’s precision of execution. Then it’s every which way with the denim: high-waist or cropped, washed and worn, patinaed with age and life. They looked especially good paired with chunky socks and the kind of pointy shoes perhaps more beloved of an early-’80s-era East Village punkster rather than your average Alexander Trocchi-ite, but only just.That said, those aren’t the only pants on offer here. Elsewhere, it’s a slender look that sits high on, or is pleated at, the waist then finishes to almost graze the ankles. They’re a boyish, lanky, and very current rendering of the kind of clothing that Yves Saint Laurent himself might have favored back when he was busy epater-ing les bourgeoisie during his (short-lived) tenure at Christian Dior. As Left Bank radicals were gathering at the Café de Flore, the young Yves, inspired by the Beat movement’s transgressive spirit, was sending out rebellious black leather to an ashen-faced room of Dior haute couture clients.That linking of the many cultural narratives around Saint Laurent—the man, the label, and the myth—and Vaccarello’s own street-inflected sense of the house’s classic tropes is what makes his work so compelling: his constant restating of the contemporary relevance of historical legacy.
(Though lately, Vaccarello has been putting his own unfussy way of dressing into the mix of his men’s too, most notably with the likes of the perfect leather aviator jacket, which has supplanted the house’s one-time affection for the perfecto biker.)Yet there’s another French titan who Vaccarello has on his mind right now: Serge Gainsbourg, the musician, artist, and all-around cultural provocateur who was active in Paris at the time of the Beats. “I’m a big fan of Serge Gainsbourg,” Vaccarello said. “It’s like an obsession for me to always start with the feeling of a pinstriped jacket with blue denim, a khaki shirt, and classic shoes. I will never be tired of that way [of his] to wear clothes...nonchalance but extreme taste in the details.” Then, just to tease where his own road is leading him, Vaccarello dropped a hint about where his menswear is going. “I just found out this week a little secret about [the] details [Serge] was paying attention to,” he said, “and that is bringing me to the next collection.”
9 July 2020
Anyone who was at Anthony Vaccarello’s terrific winter 2020 runway show for Saint Laurent was inevitably floored by the color and the fact that there was plenty of it. Actually, maybe I should scream that out: color! Or just spell it out—c-o-l-o-r—so that it’s as monumental as the Eiffel Tower that stands gleaming in the night sky and is always in the direct line of vision from the YSL show venue.This collection of many colors wasn’t business as usual chez Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent. He has been a master of nuance at the Parisian house. Many a season has seen a textural layering of black on black on black—by turns an imagining of it as romantic, sexual, or folkloric. So, Vaccarello’s palette of electric blue and scarlet and deep purple—classic YSL hues that he gave an inventive and lustrous twist by using for the likes of a latex cocktail dress or leggings worn with a bougie-chic blazer—was quite the (delightful) shock to the system.Of course, anyone who’d looked at this fall collection, a season typically not seen publicly until it’s actually in the stores, might have gotten a clue that color was on his mind. “I started really enjoying those mixes of colors with the fall,” Vaccarello said. “It gave me the idea and desire to continue it for winter. I always thought that [color] was not my thing...but with time I have to say I just love mixing those improbable colors together, like in a painting.” With fall there isn’t the samemaitressevibe of winter but instead a softer, warmer approach, using color—rust, ochre, a deep leafy green—in a judicious way so that it exalts and amplifies the kind of pieces Vaccarello sees as his perfect YSL garderobe.That could mean a red velvet jacket—one of the many jackets that he treats as something utilitarian and everyday, worn “with your hands in your pockets...like a coat,” he opined—over a white open-neck blouse and with beaten-up jeans. (Jeans, incidentally, not a million kilometers away from those he just revealed in his superlative men’s fall-winter collection.) Or it could mean a kingfisher silk blouse gleaming from beneath an ocelot-like furry bomber and leather ski pants, the shade of blue set off beautifully by a hippieish gold metal belt.The other narrative threaded throughout his fall Saint Laurent is the ’70s, an evergreen era for the house. Here the decade is given a different cultural context by Vaccarello.
He’s not looking so much at the likes of Betty Catroux or Loulou de la Falaise but instead Jane Fonda—actress, activist, icon. “[She] is always relevant, for everything she did in the ’70s and also for what she is still doing,” he said. “She is committed and active and never afraid to stand for her beliefs.”Incidentally, the year that her feminist-empowering thrillerKlutecame out—1971—was the very same year that Yves himself sent out his controversial ’40s-by-way-of-the-’70s collection. There are shades of both in this Saint Laurent fall: the button-through skirt in leather or patchworked denim; the fluffy chubby; the squared-off shoulder line of a double-breasted jacket, be it a Le Smoking or in BCBG navy wool. And it’s with those jackets that Vaccarello finds a perfect equilibrium, their sublime shoulder lines set off, as he envisages, by the softest of dresses worn underneath. That combination’s quiet power is one meaningful way to consider dressing when navigating our new and ever-changing world.
9 July 2020
The opening look of Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent laid bare exactly what he was thinking of for next fall: anhaute bourgeoisred tartan double-breasted blazer, gilt-buttoned, velvet-collared, atop a matching jabot neckline blouse, hair swept back, substantial gold and jet earrings, and…black latex trousers so tight they were vying for the position of first skin, let alone second. And there was plenty more where that came from: exquisite jackets, impeccably tailored, mostly double-breasted, many with those same gilded buttons, in ochre cashmere, pearly gray flannel, jaunty navy wool, natty brown houndstooth—and all worn with those same part-club-kid, part-dominatrix, all-gloss pants.As the show progressed, other elements were introduced. There were fab masculine overcoats falling from squared-off shoulders. Out came a few gorgeously hued (teal, forest green) fluffy feather chubbies. As a variation on the leggings-esque trousers, some strict pencil skirts, which sported slashes from the thigh down and were worn with high-shine long boots. (Those not feeling ready for an adventure in latex would be advised to think about swapping out the pants for the skirts, and wear those with one of Vaccarello’s terrific jackets, to look equally fall 2020; next season, the skirt suit is going to beit.) And to finish it all off, some drop-dead cocktailania, all drape-fronted and hip-cleaving, classically ’80s/’90s YSL, in the likes of ruby velvet or—yep—more latex; one dress, in scarlet, worked to move with the liquidity of the lightest of silks, was a standout.All of this fetish-gl(e)am contrasting with the strictly buttoned-up was akin to discovering that your Parisienne dowager aunt, should you have one (I don’t), liked to cut loose of an evening by flicking through the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Just to amuse herself. And that she might choose to rest her heels—those in Vaccarello’s show were great; a vertiginous slingback adorned with the kind of buckle beloved of Séverine Serizy—on one of Allen Jones’s ’60s-era kinky coffee tables. It was as if BCBG had gotten all tangled up with BDSM, and how often do you hear that?Backstage post-show, Vaccarello readily acknowledged the current #MeToo climate, and spoke of celebrating a woman’s power and her own sense of self. Yet he has always been a designer who’s demurred at the oft-lazy tag of “sexy.” For him, it’s not so much “let’s talk about sex” as it is “let’s talk about legs.
” Ever since his arrival at Saint Laurent, Vaccarello has endorsed a woman’s right to express her own physicality, and ergo her sexuality, any way she wants. It’s something that, if the way young women the world-over are dressing is anything to go by, has connected both generationally and globally.What was new was the way Vaccarello chose to riff on the kind of taut yet lush sensuality that Monsieur Saint Laurent was such a master of, twisting it anew by focusing on all those bourgeois gestures in high contrast with his slicked-up leggings. And what else was new, yet very Yves: the uninhibited sense of color, with Vaccarello working his way through the classic YSL palette—fuchsia to purple to emerald to hot pink—and showcasing it his own way through that extremely non-classic latex. After the show, Vaccarello laughed and said he’d only gone so colorful because he was always being told that he only does black, and that it might be a one-season-only excursion. Let’s hope not, when it so readily sprung to life here.
25 February 2020
This past June, Anthony Vaccarello showed his men’s Spring 2020 Saint Laurent collection—and a smattering of women’s looks from his 2020 Resort—on a boardwalk (of ebonized wood, very YSL) that snaked down a Malibu beach. There was a pulsating soundtrack and a major A-list-y celeb front row, but both kind of recede into the memory when you consider Vaccarello had the West Coast sky sliding into night and the waves crashing against the shoreline as his backdrop.Vaccarello said he had been thinking about how Morocco’s glittering hippie/boho enclaves of the late ’60s and early ’70s (also very YSL) are mirrored by the live-by-your-own-free-spirited-rules of latter-day California. It’s a pretty spot-on comparison. After all, where else resides that sense of being able to simultaneously lose yourselfandfind yourself?For him, that duality might also be striking a little closer to home; to Paris, specifically Vaccarello’s Left Bank design atelier. There was a distinct new comfort level to the men’s collection, literally and metaphorically; the terrific djellaba-like tunic-shirts and voluminous tapering pressed-pleat pants, a sure sign of his growing confidence with menswear. When it comes to the women’s looks—seen in greater numbers a few weeks ago at a viewing of the 2020 Resort—it’s obviously different. Vaccarello has been designing accomplished (and provocative) womenswear for a decade and more. His Saint Laurent women’s shows have been pyrotechnic showstoppers, with some audacious ideas—neon in black light; monumental sculptural feathers—which have been brand (and Instagram) dynamite.Yet away from the main stage, Resort makes it clear that Vaccarello is getting very comfortable in going full steam ahead on a YSL that’s about everyday life. (Look, I know the term is all relative, and after seeing the Resort, who wouldn’t want to have the kind of fabled, escapist day-to-day these clothes exude?) If Saint Laurent the man designed plenty of the building blocks of the modern wardrobe—the tuxedo, the blouse, the trench—then Vaccarello is retooling them his way. From Resort that might mean a black velvet smoking jacket with gilded edges, worn with a long black leather skirt that has as much snap as the fastenings running down its front, or a jet and gold sequin lace camisole with white jeans.An ivory silk tie-front shirt worn with yet more of those press-pleated pants riffed on Monsieur Saint Laurent’s own North African uniform back in the day.
Ditto the vest traced with swirls of embroidery over a silk shirt where polka dots were formed out of a constellation of golden pinheads. These were worn with jeans that grazed the ankles, the better to show off new tortoiseshell-effect leather oxfords, or, possibly, ribbon-strap thong sandals. When you wear them, you might be feeling gritty old city streets underfoot, but as with much else on offer here, you’ll also be magically transported elsewhere.
25 November 2019
Pillars of white light strafed the night sky from a vast black stadium erected opposite the Eiffel Tower. Somehow, the Saint Laurent show sensation has morphed into something between an open-air city spectacle, a rock concert, and a brand power rally. In the experiential stakes, public visibility of Saint Laurent under Anthony Vaccarello’s creative directorship reaches for miles and miles across the center of Paris; it’s an event that gathers hundreds of onlookers, who sit on the walls opposite to see the models passing by. As a phenomenon, it could fuel any number of case studies about how the exclusionary hierarchies of luxury fashion have fallen and dissolved into irrelevance in today’s digital world.Yet for all that, everything that took place on that runway tonight centered around what Yves Saint Laurent did in the 20th century—his Le Smokings and his hippie deluxe Russian collection—and how Vaccarello systematically retools, rechannels, and reiterates it for a new generation. Amid the automated crossbeams of lights swiveling from the floor, he began with reams of micro shorts and Bermuda cutoff jeans; riffs on tailored jackets; Betty Catroux sunglasses; and slick, funnel-leg Western boots.After nailing that message (a believable one, since all girls have been addicted to tiny shorts this summer), the segue to hippie glam—the style that Yves Saint Laurent elevated from the street in 1976—began with turban-tied Lurex head scarves and then moved into an extended run of gorgeous gold paisley embroidered dresses, tissue-like chiffon blouses, pleated lamé skirts, peasant smocks, and off-the-shoulder gathered necklines.For a designer who has often kept to a strict and narrow canon of black, this was a softer, more delicate side to Vaccarello’s sensibility, and one rich with a kind of relatable, easy romanticism that young women haven’t been offered recently.But then, there was even more. After a dramatic pause, lights down, came the Saint Laurent payoff: all the tuxedo suits, led by Stella Tennant and closed out by Naomi Campbell. Message? This is timeless Saint Laurent, not just for the leggy and skinny in their clubbing years but for all generations.
24 September 2019
Ever since Anthony Vaccarello landed at Saint Laurent in 2016—in fact, even before, with his own label—he has always had a preference for staging his shows so that the audience sits on only one side of the runway, giving an uninterrupted view of the unfolding spectacle. For his Summer 2020 men’s show, his second for the house after last June’s ’70s opium-fest in NYC, it was business as usual, if it’s possible to call staging a show on an ebonized boardwalk runway atop a Malibu beach usual. (Nope, obviously not, not even for the likes of Keanu Reeves, LaKeith Stanfield, and Miley Cyrus, who sat front row.) More on why California in a minute, but what did that uninterrupted view of the clothes tell us? That Vaccarello, who barely tackled menswear prior to arriving at Saint Laurent, save for his brief stint at Versus, is a quick study. This was a strong and assured outing from him, connecting to some of that YSL legend of old, but also with his own unerring sense of what a young guy might actually want to wear today.The major starting point for the collection, Vaccarello said at a preview, was Marrakech in the ’70s (YSL was a habituée) reimagined as 21st-century Los Angeles, a city that resides on Vaccarello’s own emotional landscape. (He first visited when he was 14, and there have been many return visits.) While that’s some geographical leap, it’s not an unimaginable one; both locations speak to a yearning for a certain bohemian, free-spirited, almost mystical escape. “You come to L.A. for vacation,” Vaccarello said. “You can disconnect from the rest of the world.”The Morocco-by-way-of-LA-isms were smartly and sparingly deployed throughout the collection and considered flourishes, not theme-gone-wild. The tasseled hoods, djellaba shirting, and embroideries of tiny silver discs suspended from chains amplified the rigor of the classic YSLvestiairethat Vaccarello has been busy exploring (thesaharienne, the sharp-as-a-tack tux) as well as the kind of pieces (the bomber, the spencer) that he has introduced into the house’s lexicon. At a time when men’s tailoring is coming back with a vengeance, there was plenty of it here that intrigued, including jackets whose shoulder seams ran on the bias, keeping the line defined, but, apparently, allowing for more comfort and mobility. After all, how else might you convince a generation accustomed to the freedom of streetwear to try tailoring on for the first time—and keep it on?
7 June 2019
With his 2019 Pre-Fall, Anthony Vaccarello clearly understands one thing: A designer cannot live by the Eiffel Tower alone. Pretty much since his arrival at Saint Laurent, his shows, nearly all held in the shadow of the Tour d’Eiffel, have been the sort of pyrotechnic productions designed to cement the position of a global brand in the 21st century. They’ve also seen Vaccarello cleverly conflate his setting of one of Paris’s most iconic constructions with an ambitious and confident building of his own; that which can be achieved when the ateliers are furiously working at a couture level to produce the fantastic feathered and leathered numbers of his Spring 2018 show, say, or to take six perfectionist months to achieve a shoulder big enough and elevated enough to satisfy him, as with Fall 2019’s Betty Catroux–goes–Blade Runnertailoring. After all, this is Paris, baby, and don’t you forget it.Yet away from the twinkling lights, Vaccarello has been busily and quietly building something else with his pre-collections; designing for those moments when a real wardrobe for real life needs to take center stage. “It’s a Rive Gauche way of seeing clothes,” he said of this Pre-Fall one Parisian afternoon a day or so after his show this past February. “It’s about avestiaire, rather than creating a new silhouette. I like fantasy, but I also like realness. This is more the idea of the perfect jacket, the perfect shirt, the perfect skirt, the perfect jeans.”Hanging from the racks were plenty of those, regardless of the gender of the collection. For if his women’s shows have prized the idea that a woman has the absolute right to show her body any which way she chooses, his pre-season collections for men and women skew far closer together. That said, there are still plenty of teeny-tiny Vaccarello trademark evening looks here, now shaped with one major shoulder and in a glittery leopard brocade or, rather wittily, a faded, washed denim.Otherwise, it’s androgyny all the way. Shrunken blazers, some riffing on Le Smoking, cut high and tight on the armholes. Lean rock ’n’ roller-ish pants finishing at a length that just grazes the ankles. Monochromatic marinière stripes delineating everything from a house-classic matelot sweater to a fur chubby, a skinny cable knit pullover to the fabulously ostentatious and oversize furry scarves that came wrapped around the necks of several of the (men’s) looks.
Save for a few Debbie Harry–inspired spike heels, the women’s shoes were as flat as the men’s, the result, Vaccarello said, of his reacting to the towering kitschy platforms he did for Spring 2019.
28 May 2019
How should a creative director address the legacy of the designer whose house they inherit? It’s a question made newly relevant by the passing of the great Karl Lagerfeld in Paris last week. And it’s a subject that came to mind as Anthony Vaccarello’s superconfident new collection for Saint Laurent marched past—starting with look number 2, a broad-shouldered, ivory wool coat modeled by a 21st-century doppelgänger of the YSL muse Betty Catroux, complete with signature sideswept peroxide mane and black shades.Since his arrival nearly three years ago, Vaccarello has seemed comfortable to explore the parts of Yves Saint Laurent’s legacy that most closely align with his own—briefly: anything short, short, short. But spanning 40 years as it does, YSL’s oeuvre is vast. Vaccarello’s latest explored several eras or moments of that legacy, but the aspect that had everyone in the audience so jazzed tonight was the tailoring, which was strong, almost man-size, and focused on the shoulders. In a preview, Vaccarello said he spent six months getting the proportions right and that they were built up with padding to extend two centimeters beyond the shoulder seams. “The show pieces are all done by hand,” he explained. “We’ll have to figure out how to perfect it [in the factory].”Vaccarello is loath to psychoanalyze his motivations, but many in the audience were fully prepared to do so. There’s an old-fashioned rivalry brewing in Paris (something that YSL and Lagerfeld knew plenty about, as it happens; readThe Beautiful Fallfor all the fabulous details), and competition, as they say, is good for business. As for why Instagram lit up afterward with photos of those boss coats, Vaccarello does have a theory. “She’s not making war; she’s not a combatant. But she is really strong; she’s fearless.” Many of us respond to that silhouette, especially in our current dark times.The designer’s other subjects this season were YSL’s Opium moment and the haute couture “Scandal” collection of Spring 1971. The former produced all manner of lavishly worked beaded evening jackets, worn with micro-shorts, Swiss-dot stockings, and knee boots for a modern vibe. The latter was Vaccarello’s Pop reinterpretation of Saint Laurent’s own revisionist take on World War II–era clothing, which was critically panned at the time but went on to become influential in the street.
This section of the show was harder to see, with the models walking behind a wall of glass, in black light, with a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room mirror situation behind them. Vaccarello has made a signature of these “second acts,” but this collection hardly needed one. He had most of us at that coat inspired by Betty Catroux.
26 February 2019
How should a creative director address the legacy of the designer whose house they inherit? It’s a question made newly relevant by the passing of the great Karl Lagerfeld in Paris last week. And it’s a subject that came to mind as Anthony Vaccarello’s superconfident new collection for Saint Laurent marched past—starting with look number 2, a broad-shouldered, ivory wool coat modeled by a 21st-century doppelgänger of the YSL muse Betty Catroux, complete with signature sideswept peroxide mane and black shades.Since his arrival nearly three years ago, Vaccarello has seemed comfortable to explore the parts of Yves Saint Laurent’s legacy that most closely align with his own—briefly: anything short, short, short. But spanning 40 years as it does, YSL’s oeuvre is vast. Vaccarello’s latest explored several eras or moments of that legacy, but the aspect that had everyone in the audience so jazzed tonight was the tailoring, which was strong, almost man-size, and focused on the shoulders. In a preview, Vaccarello said he spent six months getting the proportions right and that they were built up with padding to extend two centimeters beyond the shoulder seams. “The show pieces are all done by hand,” he explained. “We’ll have to figure out how to perfect it [in the factory].”Vaccarello is loath to psychoanalyze his motivations, but many in the audience were fully prepared to do so. There’s an old-fashioned rivalry brewing in Paris (something that YSL and Lagerfeld knew plenty about, as it happens; readThe Beautiful Fallfor all the fabulous details), and competition, as they say, is good for business. As for why Instagram lit up afterward with photos of those boss coats, Vaccarello does have a theory. “She’s not making war; she’s not a combatant. But she is really strong; she’s fearless.” Many of us respond to that silhouette, especially in our current dark times.The designer’s other subjects this season were YSL’s Opium moment and the haute couture “Scandal” collection of Spring 1971. The former produced all manner of lavishly worked beaded evening jackets, worn with micro-shorts, Swiss-dot stockings, and knee boots for a modern vibe. The latter was Vaccarello’s Pop reinterpretation of Saint Laurent’s own revisionist take on World War II–era clothing, which was critically panned at the time but went on to become influential in the street.
This section of the show was harder to see, with the models walking behind a wall of glass, in black light, with a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room mirror situation behind them. Vaccarello has made a signature of these “second acts,” but this collection hardly needed one. He had most of us at that coat inspired by Betty Catroux.
25 April 2019
If there’s one which thing ’60s, ’70s and ’80s fashion stood for in France—and symbolized all over the globe—it was the glamorization of sexual liberation. Thanks to Yves Saint Laurent, and to Helmut Newton’s erotic projections via his work in FrenchVogue, women were emboldened to claim their sexual power over men through the epitome of sophisticated dressing. The book of masculine-feminine style, tailoring, chiffon, flashed legs in black stockings was written then. Anthony Vaccarello is in charge of carrying that flame now—and you cannot fault him for being true to himself in his new role as creative director at Saint Laurent. Vaccarello does short, short, short, and tailoring. Always has. Check back to Nicole Phelps’s review of his first show as an indie designer on March 1, 2011, and there he is, saying: “It’s always black, always sexy.”So, anyway: There was plenty of black tonight, not least in the form of the shallow black temporary infinity pool along which the leggy legion of Saint Laurent women stomped in their variously spangly, Western-influenced Le Smoking tuxedos, rich velvet band-boy jackets, corset-waisted pants, tiny dresses, and of course, shorts: shorts in black or gold leather, shorts in the fab form of sequined playsuits with exaggerated glam shoulders. At one end of the vista was the Eiffel Tower; at the other, reflected in the pool, a line of fake white palm trees. And beyond that, on the public side of the Trocadéro plaza, a crowd of hundreds of young Parisians, dangling their legs as they sat on a wall to spectate at this national brand’s extravaganza for free.Happenstance had it that the climate of sexual politics was taking a triumphal turn at exactly the moment that Vaccarello was finale-ing with his alternated cutaway asymmetric bodysuits and sheer black chiffon dresses. Frenchwomen today were celebrating the news that, under a new law, a man had been fined and given a three-month sentence for slapping a 21-year old woman on the buttocks on a bus near Paris. (In France, women have been speaking out about the condoned culture of casual sexual harassment all summer.) Meanwhile, their American sisters up in the Saint Laurent stands were barely containing whoops as they read on their phones of the sentencing of the sexual predator Bill Cosby.
25 September 2018
In 1978, Yves Saint Laurent threw a party to fete the launch of his Opium fragrance. It was held on a ship docked at New York City’s South Street Seaport and featured a giant bronze Buddha and thousands of orchids flown in from Hawaii. Forty years later, on a chilly June night in 2018, Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello hosted an impressive, ultra-modernized pseudo-version of that event across the Hudson in New Jersey’s Liberty State Park to present his Spring 2019 men’s collection. In lieu of tropical lushness were thousands of square feet of shiny black gridded marble trussed 14 feet in the air (thanks to the engineering powers of Bureau Betak). In place of Nan Kempner, Truman Capote, and Cher sat Lauryn Hill and her daughter Selah Marley, Kate Moss, and Travis Scott. And while the house has adapted a certain element of super-slick provocation, at least in terms of presentation (Vaccarello’s recent Paris shows have afforded million-dollar views of a sparkling Eiffel Tower), the clothes on view tonight were what tied the generations together; they comprised a smartly pitched blend, full of references to the ’70s, but revelry-ready as ever for the late 2010s.Vaccarello said he wanted to represent “the idea of New York, the idea of the icons of New York in the ’70s.” Parts of that were Studio 54 in verve: the diamanté shirt placket on Look 1, gold trim on a peaked double-breasted blazer a little later. But more so, it was the dive-ier Max’s Kansas City that sprung to mind—full of the sort of dirty glamour that has proven itself an immortal style, in Spring’s case with distressed denim hoodies, patchworked boots, and show-stealing high-waisted, boot-cut trousers with just a slightly amplified flare at the kick. Vaccarello noted that these were new. His accessories were also noteworthy and novel, and included boat hats (fitting given the scene, with ferries and Boston Whalers scuttling by) and tossed-on and tangled necklaces. So still indulgent and wild, but with just the right amount of polish (needed in an age where nearly nothing, even in the gloaming after-hours, goes unnoticed).And then there was the finale—and it wasn’t just the standard lap. Far from it, actually. Every model came out artfully bathed in disco-ball silver body paint. Body glitter is usually associated nowadays with music festivals, but in the moment tonight, no such thought occurred.
This was a “different interpretation of evening couture, for men, without having volume,” said Vaccarello, and indeed, the treatment lent a shine of ultra-glam masculinity that felt very on brand and also somehow . . . right. As in: sexy and now and liberated, but literally painted across the tenets of a fortified, fabulous legacy.
6 June 2018
It was one way for Saint Laurent to make the world beyond fashion sit up and boggle: a vast, spotlight-projecting, stadium-size box, slap-bang opposite the Eiffel Tower. The design of the temporary architecture, built to illuminate the public space in a spectacle no tourist or passer-by could possibly miss, seemed to project the inside-out frequency of Saint Laurent’s communication on the global stage. This was no mere show space designed for the protected eyes of the privileged few. It hulked on the night skyline, emitting rays and vapor like something between a concert venue and scene out of a sci-fi series: a thrill for theStranger Thingsgeneration, brought to life.So, too, were the clothes. Anthony Vaccarello has an uncompromising consistency in putting over his message: legs as far as the eye could see; black leather shorts; big-shouldered ’80s dresses lopped off to swimsuit length; enough skinny-jeaned rock star boys to fill a tour bus. He is exclusively on the side of the young, a brand warrior in the global corporate fashion war to capture the attention of everyone below the age of 25.Or so it would seem. Nevertheless, as the successor to Hedi Slimane’s conversion of Saint Laurent into a brand powerhouse, Vaccarello has the same ability to conceal far more broadly attractive pieces in his collection than first meets the eye. What his no-bottoms silhouettes conspire to draw the eye to are the boots: regular black ankle boots with a silver buckle, a new chunky platform shape (boot of the season), and then glamorous fur-cuffed suede stiletto knee boots. And the tops! Disguised within the dark, dense layers of this collection were vast numbers of jackets, shirts, and blouses for both genders. Far off and difficult to see in the blinding spotlight of the massive walkway, up close, there proved to be riches in tailored black leather, velvet, embroidery, tassels, and fringed trimmings.It was a long show—lengthened not just by Vaccarello’s decision to plonk his menswear collection (with its skinny panne and crushed velvet ’70s suits) right in the middle, but also to add a colorful, glittery evening addendum to the collection. In all? From the on-trend head wraps to the footwear, there was more than plenty here to keep Saint Laurent powering on at retail. And whisper it: Among all those jackets, tops, and lean coats lies a plethora of choice for older sophisticates as well.
27 February 2018
“I want to tell the story of Saint Laurent, of Paris—nothing more deeply than that,” said Anthony Vaccarello, fielding a huge backstage scene after his epic open-air show on a balmy night, with the Eiffel Tower sparkling in the background. Hundreds of spectators—the public and professionals—looked on, held in the awestruck moment. There were legs for miles and glamour as far as the eye could see. Ostrich feathers flew, glitter dresses glinted, duchesse satin bubbled, and boots upon more boots stomped. Vaccarello summed it up, humbly and succinctly: “That girl of Saint Laurent—she wants to have fun,” he said. “She’s not depressed. She wants to enjoy life!”The resilient human longing for escapism is always welcome when times are tough—and here it was, counterintuitively displayed in splendor on a platform wide and visible enough to cheer a whole city. The set, built out below the Trocadéro, was vast; the ambition of it an inescapable statement. Yves Saint Laurent has always symbolized something more about Paris than simply being a fashion brand: It stands for chic, for eroticism, for a liberal code—a book of dressing that was written by one young designer and his business partner, Pierre Bergé, both French national heroes. For Vaccarello, and for everyone watching, the emotional weight of this show was further freighted by the death, earlier this month, of Bergé.In circumstances that must have been hugely daunting, Vaccarello passed the test with singular focus and conviction. Without being too obediently or heavily referential, his collection read as a seamless journey, one that that began with the hippie souvenirs of Marrakech and ended in the grand haute couture tradition of Saint Laurent’s atelier in Paris. There were floating, billowy-sleeved silk blouses, gold-coin–dot printed tulle tops, sparkling embroidered sequined dresses, and bravura ostrich feathers, all of it paired with the tiniest of shorts and skirts and an endless march of sensational boots.The results of Vaccarello’s public exam? There were plenty of references to Saint Laurent’s storied body of work for the experts to mull over. But for a worldwide audience, almost certainly too young to know or care about the history, this was a rare glimpse of fashion with a capital F. It was an extreme, bold statement of leadership and conviction, a bright and brilliant shot of sexuality, provocation, and the promise of all kinds of fun for a new generation.
26 September 2017
Moments afterAnthony Vaccarello’s sophomore show forSaint Laurent, and surrounded by a group of towering and particularly gorgeous well-wishers—Charlotte Gainsbourg, Eva Herzigova, Amber Valletta, and Anja Rubik among them—he knelt forward to speak to Pierre Bergé, the legendary, and legendarily formidable, cofounder of the house of Saint Laurent, who had come to pay his respects. Their exchange lasted for only a few minutes, and Vaccarello went in close to listen to whatever Bergé was whispering to him. Given the expressions on each of their faces, well, they both looked pretty darn happy. This was the sole quiet and intimate moment in a show where everything was turned up to LOUD, which you could say is the second legacy that Vaccarello has had to deal with: not only the size of the legend of the originator of the house, but also its most recent incumbent, Hedi Slimane, a dab hand at the Runway Show as Rock Mega Stadium experience.Vaccarello again chose to show in the new and still under construction Saint Laurent HQ on Rue de Bellechasse, this time in an enormous raw amphitheater with tiered stadium seating, the club soundtrack set to pulsing, bone-shaking (and yeah, foot-tapping, and seat-dancing) noise levels. But make no mistake. This was no Slimane redux moment. To anyone familiar with the shows that the young Italo-Belgian designer used to do under his own name, this one wasn’t wildly different, just staged at the kind of maximum volume level that’s required for a brand of this magnitude. And as with those seems-to-be-a-new-one-every-minute campaigns he has been turning out with the likes of Collier Schorr and Inez and Vinoodh, which have made a point of celebrating very 21st-century notions of inclusive beauty and all sorts of expressions of sexuality, Vaccarello has been loudly and firmly putting his stamp on YSL while striving to stay true to himself.That, most importantly, includes the clothes. Yves Saint Laurent is of course one of those houses where everyone has an opinion and no two are alike. It’d be nigh impossible to ever reach a consensus on what it should, could, needs to be; everyone is a yay-sayer, or a naysayer, just depends on who you ask. Vaccarello, for his part, realized that his way forward was to be referential, respectful even, just don’t ever get trapped into being reverential. As with last season he was, he said, inspired by one particular dress, an haute couture number with huge sleeves which dates from the early ’80s.
“I always relate YSL to parties, to evening,” Vaccarello said backstage. “I couldn’t do a show without those golden years, but I wanted to take that further.” So while his show ended with the usual final lap of honor for the models, they were dressed not in what they’d just worn, but in different iterations of tiny, sculpted, curvaceous after-dark looks, glistening in black velvet, gleaming in black leather, glittering from thousands of rhinestones—get a load of the diamond cable-knit sweater, which was knockout! What preceded all this focused on clothes for daylight hours, though, truth be told, those were pretty turned up to the max, too.
28 February 2017
Anthony Vaccarellochose to hold his debut show forSaint Laurentin the impressive surroundings of a palatial building site—a former monastery, later a military headquarters, which has been derelict in the heart of Paris and is now being restored as the Saint Laurent headquarters. The background worked for Vaccarello as a trope for his entry into the house. “It’s a work in progress,” he said at a preview—a modest, realistic statement from a guy not given to bombastic assertions.The image of transition was writ very large in these circumstances. Vaccarello, is, of course, taking over the job recently vacated byHedi Slimane—and the commercial success of the former creative director has to have a lot to do with scale of the investment Kering, Saint Laurent’s parent company, is sinking into this stunning renovation. Vaccarello’s new position is an opportunity for which he closed his own line, to concentrate on the responsibility of reimagining whom the Saint Laurent girl might be. “She’s certainly not bourgeois or classic,” said Vaccarello. “She has a huge respect for Saint Laurent, but not in the first degree. So I thought of her taking a vintage dress and cutting into it.”In particular, that dress was a puffed-shouldered number from anYves Saint Laurentcollection of 1982, and a black leather version of it opened this show. A fair enough start, since the ’80s revival is taking hold in Paris, largely triggered by Slimane’s parting shot last season. Embracing the ’80s isn’t a stylistic stretch for Vaccarello, either; his own sexy looks have always stuck to that kind of glamor. He played on it with plunging bustier tops in leather or velvet, pelmet skirts and boyfriend jeans, a section devoted to draped gold lamé, iterations of skinny smoking suits, and variations on one-sleeved dresses.As a fun spin on ’80s logomania, there was a pair of heels spelling out “YSL” and earrings to match. Surely there will be much more of that sort of thing in the vast showrooms—products that have always supported the runway show. It’s too soon to call a verdict on Vaccarello in his new role; the job in this massive brand is as much directing teams and generating myriad ideas for merchandise as it is designing. Time will tell what kind of leader he’s to be, and the proof will be in what really fills the shops.
27 September 2016
Was itHedi Slimane’s farewell atSaint Laurent? Or the beginning of something no one had guessed at: La Maison Yves Saint Laurent, a new, or reconstituted, haute couture house? Whichever it may transpire to be—all gossip put aside for a few minutes—the abiding truth about fashion is that it craves and thrives on surprise. Hedi Slimane’s was a full-on shock: a collection which pushed the ’80s shoulder to a pinnacle of upstanding exaggeration, drove glittery hemlines up, plunged necklines, belted waists with flourishing side-bows, poufed skirts, clad legs in sheer black tights, and put feet into stiletto pumps. What with the slicked-back hair, red lipstick, and triangular earrings, it read as a sublimated 21st-century throwback to everyHelmut Newton–eraVogueshoot fashion remembers. There was an homage toYves Saint Laurentin every look, yet the collection was just as uncompromisingly faithful to the ultra-ultra-skinny youth aesthetic which Hedi Slimane has pushed in fashion for his whole career.There was another huge shock to the system too: that this show was held in a beautiful 18th-century house on the Rue de l’Université, and conducted in bright lighting as models filed out—precisely in the style which was standard in old haute couture houses until the 1980s. The numbers of the outfits were even called out as each girl appeared, yet there was nothing satirical or ironic in the presentation. At that proximity, the quality of the clothes can’t be faked—and it was impeccable. From the smoothly fine fit of the leather dresses to the raven-wing sequins, the black ostrich coat with the pink- and turquoise-painted tips, and the extraordinary black columns and flounced tiers of the evening dresses, this collection proved that Slimane can cut it and fit it with the best.There is no doubt that the early ’80s have been triggering designers recently (J.W.Anderson’s vast leg-of-mutton sleeves were the bellwether, last season), but Slimane it was who seized the opportunity to plug straight back into the power of the main man, Yves Saint Laurent. There is still no cut-and-dried announcement about whether this means that Hedi Slimane is staying on at Saint Laurent, possibly in an upgraded couture capacity, or whether the incredible red fox fur heart-shaped cape at the end of this show was his kiss-off to fashion for the moment. If it was, he is heading off covered in glory.
7 March 2016
It was quite the scene at the Palladium concert hall on Sunset Boulevard tonight whenHedi Slimanetransported hisSaint Laurentspectacular to his beloved City of Angels. Bottle blondeJustin Bieberbrought his skateboard, and Sly Stallone brought his daughters.Ellen DeGenerescozied up with Sam Smith, andGaga, in a gold sequin bomber and golden glitter-rimmed Groucho Marx glasses, bounded across the wide dance-floor runway to greet Courtney Love, wearing a slip of molten pewter lamé that placed herbelle poitrinevery muchsur le balcon. An ageless Jane Fonda (howcouldshe be 78?) worked a high-rise French pleat and an appropriately star-spangled tux; Lenny Kravitz rocked a beaded breastplate; Asia Chow wore a denim jacket over a frothy tulle prom dress; and Mark Ronson opted for shocking pink.Slimane has made Los Angeles his base since 2008 (he moved his studio here four years later), and he has continued to channel the city’s quirky vintage, polished grunge and rock ’n’ roll vibe into his Saint Laurent collections ever since—just asYves Saint Laurenthimself had Marrakech, Morocco’s pink adobe city where the legendary couturier was rejuvenated and inspired when he discovered that city’s flamboyant color mixes, mind-altering substances, and a whole new hippie de luxe perspective on style. So it was an exciting prospect to be invited to step into Slimane’s world and discover why he fell for Los Angeles’s seductive style when he decided to show his Fall 2016 men’s collection, and Part I of his women’s (Part II will be unveiled in Paris later this fashion season) at the storied Palladium. Steeped in Tinseltown legend, it was built in high Hollywood Moderne style on the site of an old Paramount lot, and opened in 1940 with Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra performing with the 24-year-old vocalist Frank Sinatra.Slimane bathed the concert hall’s curvaceous ceiling moldings and balconies in flaming orange light and framed the various bands’ equipment against a charming “Hollywoodland” backdrop of spindly palm trees, delicately painted in white-on-black by 18-year-oldLucia Ribisi(daughter of the actor Giovanni Ribisi). The 93-look collection also celebrated the 50th anniversary of Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche collection, and the looks paid subtle homage to his legacy.
The girls, stomping out to PyPy’s “She’s Gone,” were all dressed in the sort of midi-length skirts or culottes and Victoriana dresses favored by Loulou de La Falaise at the cusp of the ’70s, complete with the broad belts, shrunken jackets, or Berber capes she wore with them. The looks also evoked Jane Fonda’s fabulous wardrobe as the high-class call girl in Alan J. Pakula’s style-saturated 1971 movie,Klute(so did hairdresser Didier Malige’s choppy shag-cuts). The glam rock touches—like lightning bolt embroideries and peaked shoulders—suggestedDavid Bowie’s powerfully influential Ziggy Stardust costumes.
11 February 2016
It was quite the scene at the Palladium concert hall on Sunset Boulevard tonight whenHedi Slimanetransported hisSaint Laurentspectacular to his beloved City of Angels. Bottle blondeJustin Bieberbrought his skateboard, and Sly Stallone brought his daughters.Ellen DeGenerescozied up with Sam Smith, andGaga, in a gold sequin bomber and golden glitter-rimmed Groucho Marx glasses, bounded across the wide dance-floor runway to greet Courtney Love, wearing a slip of molten pewter lamé that placed herbelle poitrinevery muchsur le balcon. An ageless Jane Fonda (howcouldshe be 78?) worked a high-rise French pleat and an appropriately star-spangled tux; Lenny Kravitz rocked a beaded breastplate; Asia Chow wore a denim jacket over a frothy tulle prom dress; and Mark Ronson opted for shocking pink.Slimane has made Los Angeles his base since 2008 (he moved his studio here four years later), and he has continued to channel the city’s quirky vintage, polished grunge and rock ’n’ roll vibe into his Saint Laurent collections ever since—just asYves Saint Laurenthimself had Marrakech, Morocco’s pink adobe city where the legendary couturier was rejuvenated and inspired when he discovered that city’s flamboyant color mixes, mind-altering substances, and a whole new hippie de luxe perspective on style. So it was an exciting prospect to be invited to step into Slimane’s world and discover why he fell for Los Angeles’s seductive style when he decided to show his Fall 2016 men’s collection, and Part I of his women’s (Part II will be unveiled in Paris later this fashion season) at the storied Palladium. Steeped in Tinseltown legend, it was built in high Hollywood Moderne style on the site of an old Paramount lot, and opened in 1940 with Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra performing with the 24-year-old vocalist Frank Sinatra.Slimane bathed the concert hall’s curvaceous ceiling moldings and balconies in flaming orange light and framed the various bands’ equipment against a charming “Hollywoodland” backdrop of spindly palm trees, delicately painted in white-on-black by 18-year-oldLucia Ribisi(daughter of the actor Giovanni Ribisi). The 93-look collection also celebrated the 50th anniversary of Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche collection, and the looks paid subtle homage to his legacy.
The girls, stomping out to PyPy’s “She’s Gone,” were all dressed in the sort of midi-length skirts or culottes and Victoriana dresses favored by Loulou de La Falaise at the cusp of the ’70s, complete with the broad belts, shrunken jackets, or Berber capes she wore with them. The looks also evoked Jane Fonda’s fabulous wardrobe as the high-class call girl in Alan J. Pakula’s style-saturated 1971 movie,Klute(so did hairdresser Didier Malige’s choppy shag-cuts). The glam rock touches—like lightning bolt embroideries and peaked shoulders—suggestedDavid Bowie’s powerfully influential Ziggy Stardust costumes.
11 February 2016
Commercially,Hedi Slimanehas no more to prove with what he’s set out to do atSaint Laurent. In a word: selling. His thorough refurb, from advertising to video, to music connections to multiple lines of product, has turned Saint Laurent into a power brand. More than that, the success of his breaking down the house and rendering it into accessible, uncomplicated items has set off a chain reaction at the top of the designer fashion industry. Heads have been rolling and new ones put in place all over Milan, New York, and Paris as corporations scramble to cast talents they pray will be able to replicate Slimane’s magic touch with multiproduct marketing. WithAlessandro Michele’s appointment at Gucci, the process has been working at speed, but in some other places there are bandwagons still stuck in the garage.Not everyone can package up a look and whack it to the public in such a first-degree, widely understandable, and Zeitgeist-savvy way as Slimane. For Spring, one glance at the lowbrow tiaras, the sparkly see-through mini-mesh dresses, the rock-chick leather jackets, and the skinny legs of the models shoved into Wellington boots told us where he was going. To Glastonbury with Courtney andKateit was, with an entourage of throwback shaggy-headed waifs and a caravan-load of ready-made vintage-y stuff.Slimane was smart to suggest he was pitching it in a more down-to-earth way this season. There is a movement toward real, ordinary clothes going on, largely triggered by the left-of-field rise of theVetementscollective, which ingeniously repurposes generic garments. Slimane seemed to have tuned into that when he came up with a perfectly ordinary beige trenchcoat, sand-color camisole, jeans and black Wellingtons, a faded army-surplus shirt, patchworked denim capes, and leather bomber jackets that looked as if they could have been trawled from racks at the cheap end of Portobello Market. Say what you like about whether this is actually “design,” there is a skill in making a familiar-looking garment fit well and come off as generic enough to be absorbed into a girl’s wardrobe, and Saint Laurent’s sales have shot up because of it.Still, the grunge and glitter theme also gave Slimane the key to turning out his more special things, too: loads of variations on the bias-cut slip dress in metallic sequins or velvet patchwork, liquid gold charmeuse or black silk, plus glam fur and feather chubbies.
Finally, though, there is only one litmus test which will make this, or any collection, sell: Is the girl on the runway someone other girls want to be? Slimane’s good at pushing classic youth-cultural buttons, but in his casting the one thing he’s not in touch with is the fact that today’s young girls want to look at other girls who represent the way they look. How long will it take for designers to realize how badly they’re cutting their own chances by not reflecting that?
5 October 2015
In the gloom of backstage and beyond the restless human static of besuited security giants, street-cast gamines, and Lenny Kravitz, Saint Laurent's creative director, Hedi Slimane, looked good. His hair is a bit longer, his cheeks have partially unhollowed, his manner seemed gregarious, and his mien untwitchy. As house policy dictates (really,dictates), he didn't chat on the record—this oracle's muteness is its message—but it appears that California life agrees with him.This collection, entitled Surf Sound and subtitled "A Tribute to Contemporary Californian Surf Music Culture," was Slimane's riff on that home turf. Ultimately, it was a Cali-flavored serving of the same thrift shop, music scene, alt-cool ingredients that have been the recipe for Slimane's commercial and critical (depending on which critic you're talking to) galvanization of this house.Haters gonna hate. And you could easily—and with reason—assert that the pre-grimed "Surf" pseudo-Keds, the bobble hats, theBill & Ted'sbleached jean gilet with pink leopard-trim collar, the tie-dye sweats, the frayed-hem check shirts, and, indeed, any number of other pieces here—with the exception of some couture-fashioned tuxedo jackets and bombers—were expensively assembled simulacra of cheap items one could find in any San Diego disposal sale. But that would both miss the nub of Slimane's power and simultaneously amplify it (because nothing feeds desire like the perception of disapproval). The word "curator," so often so foully abused today, truly applies to him. The excitable youngsters he casts—four in five of today's hailed from California—the artists and musicians he commissions, and the clothes he chooses to muster as a representation of the tattered archetype that he is trying to evoke are all faultlessly assembled.
28 June 2015
With Hedi Slimane, you're either a true believer or you're not. His vision for Saint Laurent, like his dresses, allows for virtually no wiggle room. There are still naysayers. But for every person who walks out complaining that it looks like Forever 21, as we overheard tonight, or that it never changes, there's another person, usually younger (in reality or spirit), who is itching to be the Saint Laurent girl.This collection will doubtlessly prove as divisive as the rest. It started with a ceremonial rising of the catwalk. As the floor lifted, the audience got a view of flashing fluorescent lights and metal scaffolding. It looked like the underbelly of an arena stage, which made the models who strode out on top of it rock stars or rock-star groupies. Their mini crinis, cigarette pants with suspenders, and Siouxsie Sioux eye shadow placed us a few years further on from Slimane's Sunset Strip-y Spring collection. More likely, the designer was merely picking up where his men's show in January—the one he described as an homage to the young musicians of Paris—left off.Slimane's Saint Laurent woman has always had an edge, but this season she's unapologetically a bad girl, wearing leather leggings with cutouts all the way up the thighs; a black leather dress slit up to her undies, assuming she's even bothered to wear any; and ripped and shredded tights above black leather ankle boots. The shoes were killer, but those tights veered dangerously close to cliché. And they distracted from the fine workmanship (one of Slimane's secret weapons) that defined a lot of what we saw tonight. Numbers like a black and gold polka-dot beaded one-sleeve cocktail dress or a strapless style crisscrossed with zippers, a tulle crumb catcher frilling out from the bust.Alongside the haute stuff, of which there was more than ever, there were a good number of the kind of animal-print capes, navy peacoats, leather motorcycle jackets, and patchwork furs he's been showing since his YSL beginnings two-and-a-half years ago, and that have been turning up with increasing frequency all over the crowds at fashion month and beyond. For a designer as disruptive as Slimane is, he sure sells a hell of a lot of merch. If some looks here were too familiar, even for his fans, there was also plenty to inspire lust in bad girls everywhere.For Tim Blanks' take on Saint Laurent, watch this video.
9 March 2015
Cool is as intangibly elusive as a Gauloises exhalation into a high breeze. Unless you live in certain cities—of which Paris is one—and know certain people, like certain music, go to certain places, are of a certain age, have a certain mien, and are very, very lucky, well, the chances of ever being in the thick of it are marginal. And, of course, if you care, then you're almost definitely not.So what to do? Well, Hedi Slimane can help. Amid the endless, heated dissection of his work at Saint Laurent, what hasn't really been mentioned is his clothes' ability to confer that ineffable quality on the wearer. Today's show was a case in point.The illumination was, naturally, cursory. But as Slimane's models strode from one pool of half light into another, a collage of highly stylized, highly recognizable archetypes presented themselves like wisps. A fitted three-button caban, inverse-color Breton, and supertight jeans. A black jacket and polo-neck worn with supertight black jeans scarred by zippers. A grunge-touched high olive nylon bomber above a leopard sweater, plus black jeans (supertight). It's probably best to stop specifying the tightness of the pants. They were all tight—some to the point where they made Rick Owens' contribution to the conversation about male anatomy earlier this week look coy. The only elements as consistent were the 8-centimeter heels on boots for both boys and girls.But one could describe the outfits ad nauseam without ever getting to the rub. Hedi's boys, girls, and inbetweeners are an artfully assembled off-the-rack simulacra of cool. When they're amplified through Slimane's unwholesome instinct to shrink—because cool isneverwholesome—they come to represent an instantly accessible gateway to a destination otherwise verboten.Backstage, Slimane said: "I just issued a project called Paris Sessions, which is about a young generation of musicians in Paris, and the show is about them, really. It is an homage." Thus the pins on those berets reflected the lyrics of a song by Mystere written especially for this evening's show. And it was surely some of those young musicians—with cool names that include Vickie Chérie, Leo Bear Creek, and Melody Prochet—who sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the front row. But whether he's referencing his beloved American musical scenes or the contemporary Parisian one, the power of Slimane's clothes is that, to those who care, they are the coolest clothes on earth.
25 January 2015
Other designers are channeling the idealism of the early '70s this season; Hedi Slimane is into the dissipation. "Un, deux, trois, coucher avec toi," Al Eide sang on the soundtrack, specially commissioned for the show, but don't let the French lyrics fool you. We got the distinct impression we were in Slimane's adopted hometown of L.A., hanging backstage with glam-rock fan girls Lori Maddox and Sable Starr in their bad old not even legal days on the Sunset Strip.Accessories were the most obvious shift from the mid-'60s pop tarts who decorated the Saint Laurent runway last season. Instead of sparkly Mary Janes and opaque tights, platform sandals, black hosiery, and the odd Donna Jordan turban or two. Slimane's about to do for platforms what he did for low-heel pumps a few collections ago. Detractors will say the clothes looked too much the same as last season's. But take a closer look than the models' speedy turns down the runway allow, and distinctions emerge. Spring's Saint Laurent chick is a little more in love with color and a lot more comfortable with prints—Hollywood Boulevard stars, lurid flowers, and (poignantly) cherries. She's also got a new thing for showing off her décolletage, or what there is of it.A white fur chubby that covered just one shoulder and arm was a decadent kick. Where could that idea have taken the designer if he'd pushed it further? As ever, Slimane embraced the eclectic mix: A stripy Lurex sweater that could've been snatched from the vintage bin was partnered with a leather mini embroidered with silver chain in the shape of rose blossoms. In a sign that there's no price ceiling for Saint Laurent's new fans, that wasn't the end of the lavish embroidery: Fireworks picked out on a black velvet cape looked like Lesage-level stuff.In that sense, this collection straddled Slimane's worlds: L.A. groupies in Paris couture. You know he gets off on that idea. He's not the only one. The energy was contagious tonight. "I was having an orgasm," we overheard a model-slash-writer pronounce on her way out the door.
29 September 2014
Writ small on the card on everyone's seat at the Saint Laurent show were the words "Psych Rock's New Rising." A phrase pregnant with promise, and every element of the performance was exhaustively calibrated by Hedi Slimane to deliver on it. By now, we know all those elements by heart. The invitation arrives as a little black book of a California artist's work (today, Bruce Conner). The soundtrack is a contribution from an obscure West Coast sixties-revivalist band (the wide-hatted Mystic Braves were an aural and visual complement to the new collection). The front row is a cross-legged tribe of Hedi's Kids, wide-eyed disciples of his fashion shamanism. The set is an extravagant feat of futuristic engineering, with sci-fi lighting effects. And the clothes? Well, they're the costumes for Slimane's piece of theater.Until now, it has felt like Slimane was a passionate fanboy. That passion had become quite persuasive; the sales figures are more than enough evidence. But here it all went a little predictable and chilly. There was a sense of boxes to be ticked—Little Bugle Boy jacket, poncho, sheepskin vest, army surplus, embroidered jeans, amulets, snakeskin boots, garage band—rather than an unleashing of the beast of psych rock. Of course, Slimane's collections for Saint Laurent are notoriously divisive, so those items will no doubt have plenty of fervent admirers, too.One member of Slimane's cast of characters stood out for his black-suit/white-shirt garb, incongruous amid the scrawny psych rockers and their ladies of the canyon. He looked like the archetypal wheeler-dealer band manager who'd end up milking his young protégés for all they're worth. His cynical presence added to the theatricality. So did the shine of a striped lamé jacket, the sparkle of a glittery afghan, the embroidered poppy that trailed down a jacket. It was enough to make you wish Slimane would hurry up and get to glam rock on his trawl through the annals of popular music.Speaking of possible futures, the most intriguing thing in the designer's cryptic show notes was a special thanks to trance-punk artist Arrington de Dionyso. Maybe Slimane has surprises in store after all.
28 June 2014
Little sets you up for arealpop show like havingrealpop stars in the front row. Brit rockers Alex Turner and Miles Kane played their parts to the hilt at Saint Laurent tonight: quiffs, shades, tight leather pants, and a magnum of champagne that provided liberal lubrication throughout the show. Afterward, they said the girls on the catwalk were the kind of girls they'd like to get to know, but let's imagine for a moment that there was more to that line than the obvious hookup. Yes, the models were perfect, sparkly, leggy complements to the lairy likes of Turner and Kane, but their outfits also distilled the mid-sixties moment when pop was purest—and when Yves himself was designing his own edgy responses to the tremors of London's youthquake. And the appeal of pure pop is timelessly potent for musicians like Turner and his Arctic Monkeys. (Of course, it doesn't hurt when it comes in the siren form of a supermodel.)For his latest collection, Hedi Slimane chose Californian John Baldessari as the artist to feature in the little black folio that functions as his show invitation. Baldessari, now 82, is one of the grand masters of appropriation, repurposing preexistent or found imagery to create new art. It was an interesting choice on Slimane's part, maybe even a wry comment of sorts. "Appropriation" is a rather more agreeable word than other epithets that have been applied to his work at Saint Laurent, with its devotion to the source materials of youth culture.But what this collection clarified is that appropriation can work in fashion as it works in art—something new can happen. Once again, context was critical. On arrival, the audience found a catwalk lined with mysterious metal troughs. As the show began, these "troughs" turned out to be huge hydraulic arms that formed a goldenalléethrough which the models walked. (Slimane will always have a career in engineering if fashion lets him down.)The notion of transformation seemed fundamental to the character of the clothes themselves. There were fifty-four outfits, but it felt like there were a thousand pieces within those outfits, ripe for recombining. Capes were significant, but so were glittery little dolly bird shift dresses. There were at least a dozen extremely desirable coats. The casual extravagance (extravagant casualness?) of Slimane's vision was best captured by Edie Campbell in a fur-trimmed army parka over a lamé top, black tights, and crystal-covered Mary Janes.
Between the name and the look, it was hard to miss the spirit of Warhol's Edie, the ultimate pop princess.At show's end, the hydraulic arms were reconfigured as golden arches. Not triumphal…that would have been too cynical. Instead, in all those pouty young women stomping out in their capes and glam, there was something that could be construed as celebratory. And defiant. Appropriation is, after all, still an act of creation. Ask Baldessari. Ask Warhol. Ask Slimane.
2 March 2014
Hedi Slimane walks into a bar…it sounds like the start of a joke. But it's not a joke for a band like Froth, who went from being an Echo Park combo with 1,528 Facebook likes to the makers of the soundtrack for the Saint Laurent show tonight. God only knows how Slimane found them, but the notion of the designer walking into a bar, hearing a band and bookin' 'em for the Saint Laurent gig has an irresistible Kid-I'm-Gonna-Make-You-a-Star twist.Froth's Joo-Joo Ashworth graduated from El Segundo High School in 2012. Jeff Fribourg graduated from the same school in 2008. He was designing cover art for local bands, which creates a connection with Raymond Pettibon, the artist whose work Slimane portfolio-ed in his invitation (these invitations, btw, are already fashion collectibles of the highest order). Pettibon used to design the sleeves for his brother's band, the Californian hardcore legends Black Flag.There is no one who can touch Slimane for this kind of fanboy completism in fashion. He can gloss the garage band-iness of it all with a sophisticated son-et-lumière presentation, but his spirit is with the kids who sat on the floor at tonight's show.He's their Pied Piper. His clothes speak to them. Whose legs will ever be that stovepipe-y again? Still, Slimane is a businessman as well as a designer. Tonight, he broadened his constituency with a collection that sized the tailoring up a notch, Teddy Boy rather than speed-riven punk, drape jackets rather than shrunken bumfreezers. Plus a selection of coats so gorgeous they came from outerwear heaven: digital tweed, micro-leopard print, maxi-houndstooth mohair, a stripey thing, and best of all, a herringbone that sparkled like it had been paved with sequins.It was a moment to reflect on how Slimane throws you a drape in green Lurex, a jacket in gold lamé leopard, a black leather blazer alive with silver studs, and all of it just fits into his steamroller design ethos. A Froth lyric intoned, "Anything you read is so easy to believe." But critics carp. Clothes speak.
18 January 2014
If Edie Campbell didn't already exist, Hedi Slimane would surely have redirected some Kering fundage to make her in a lab somewhere. With her sullen, knowing pout and dyed black mullet, the British model embodied every last scintilla of Slimane's obsessive reconceptualization of Girls Today when she opened this evening's Saint Laurent show. And for those selfsame girls in the audience, the designer opened yet more doors to a past that unraveled when they were mere gleams in God's eye.There is simply no underestimating the power of Things We Missed Out On. The Japanese are absolute masters—mistresses?—at turning back the clock. Maybe that's why Slimane's collection felt like an impeccably detailed capsule of the Japanese rocker chick's wardrobe: the Debbie Harry bit, the Chelsea girl, the idiosyncratic punky eleganza. And now that the initial ouch of controversy surrounding his approach to the house has faded, it's easier to see the YSL in Saint Laurent: the lip print, say, or the fabulous trench or the army jacket or the one-shouldered evening extravaganza. Fact is, Hedi's Saint Laurent now has a life in the stores, and that life is so much more generous than what he parades on his catwalk.Which takes us back to the show as manifesto: The artist that Slimane selected as tonight's tentpole was Guy de Cointet. French, L.A.-based (sounds familiar), making work that was "lifelike and contrived" (we'll let that one lie), Cointet was little known but an influence on some major L.A. artists who followed. The music was a new remix of millennial L.A. band Liars. Slimane was responsible for the staging (breathtaking, with its mechanized light installation) and styling (more of a love-it-or-hate-it proposition, with its fried hair). There is no longer any shock of the whatever in what he is offering, but his compulsion to share his obsessions is irresistible. And there is some kind of weird charity in the way he lets you step back from the catwalk march-past and relish the context in which he presents his challenge to you. At this point, it seems inescapable that it's coming from A Place of Love.
29 September 2013
Oops, he did it again. But maybe he was just a little rusty last time round, because this time, it felt more persuasive. Hedi Slimane, fashion's foremost curator of pop arcana, presented a collection for Saint Laurent that refracted his cultural obsessions through a glass darkly. The blueprint is firmly established now. First, the invitation, a little black book with excerpts from the work of a current Slimane pash (this one used abstract artist Matt Connors, and it was the best-looking show invitation in living memory). Next, the soundtrack, something garage-y from California, preferably recorded yesterday, i.e. Sam Flax's "Fire Doesn't Burn Itself." Then, the mise-en-scène: dramatic, dystopian thunderdome technology that creates an electric light field. Finally, the clothes. Ah yes, the clothes.What became much clearer in this collection is just how intensely Slimane distills his teenage dreams into the perfume of his version of Saint Laurent. He wasn't old enough for rockabilly and the Teddy Boys and glam rock in their original form. What he got was all the pop re-editions. And that's what showed up here, as splendidly styled as the cast of an Alasdair McLellan photo shoot. So the catwalk was a feverish stew of references. In fact, to borrow a song title from the New York Dolls—whose presence was felt more than once—there was a regular personality crisis. Picture Dolls' guitarist Johnny Thunders in his bolo tie and bandana and red patent leggings. Or David Sylvian with his flossy Japan-era swoop of hair and glam bolero. Or Suede's Brett Anderson, in a black leather biker and pipestem pants. (Train-spotter footnote: model Matt Hitt is in a band called Drowners, the title of Suede's first single.) There was even a veiled reference to the Thin White Duke, Slimane's influence of influences, in the last look: black suit, red hair, slicked.What each of these iconic references shared was an aversion to avoirdupois. Slimane keeps that flame burning. If his boys once seemed merely wandlike, here they were line drawings of the human form. Their trousers were hitched so lift-and-separate high that the torso was truncated, forcing the boys into a hunched-against-the-wind pose. But wait! Paul Smith was once Jimmy Page's tailor, so he can attest to the fact that the Led Zeppelin guitarist, who toted massive double-necked instruments across the stages of the world, boasted a 24-inch waist.
Which means that Slimane's wasp-waisted, shrunken-chested boy band members were simply continuing the grand rock 'n' roll tradition of absolute appetite deprivation. But they were doing it in sparkly clobber slapped with the label of a Parisian high-fashion house. Think of it as the most expensive fan letter in history.
29 June 2013
It's been a busy week for Saint Laurent—the men's show on Sunday, the departure of one CEO and the arrival of another, and, finally, the presentation of Hedi Slimane's pre-spring collection for the women's line. But if change is afoot elsewhere at the brand, the designer's approach to its ready-to-wear is unwavering: To borrow a phrase, rock 'n' roll will never die.Leather, tuxedo tailoring, and what the PR team is dubbing "stagewear"—think shift dresses in glossy red sequins, a crystal jacket picked out in a baby-cat pattern, or a one-shoulder minidress with a chain-link strap—constitute the bulk of the new line. The collection was shown alongside the menswear, and in fact, there's a lot of overlap between the two. Basics like zippered gray marl sweatshirts, animal-print denim, and long bandanna scarves are essentially unisex, it was pointed out. Slimane apparently took his cues for the softer, drapier dresses from ballerinas. A ruched bustier gown with a short-in-front/long-in-back hemline managed to be both romantic and edgy at once. Even if she's playing good, the Hedi customer is a bad girl. A bad girl with a big bank account.
24 June 2013
California grunge was the inspiration for Hedi Slimane's second women's collection for Saint Laurent. Though the huge banners outside the Grand Palais still proclaimed "YSL" in the old typeface, that is more likely to be one last wrinkle of the past on the list to be ironed out, rather than an oversight on the part of a man whose yen for control is legend—to the point where you might almost think the stifling heat of the venue was his way to establish an ambience (an afternoon on Venice Beach, perhaps?).The collection was set up as an extension of the menswear Slimane showed in January. The music today was from the San Francisco garage band Thee Oh Sees, who are part of the same scene as Ty Segall, the man responsible for January's fantastic soundtrack. The invitation arrived as the same little black artist's book, this time reproducing the rather wonderful paintings of young L.A. painter Theodora Allen. The art blog Little Paper Planes says her "carefully researched paintings expertly skirt nostalgia to examine longing and legacy."With a little adjustment, that's a pretty fair description of what Slimane has been trying to do with Saint Laurent. The legacy today was grunge, not YSL; the longing was his own ardent attachment to a scene that was a continent and an ocean away from a kid in Paris at the beginning of the nineties. Slimane is not the only designer motivated by a powerful impulse to reimagine youthful yearnings. Anna Sui and Marc Jacobs immediately spring to mind as masterful mediums of pop-cultural watersheds like The Factory or the Beats. And of course, it was Jacobs who famously lost a job over his original recasting of grunge in a high-fashion context.But there was no job on the line, no sense of present danger, with Slimane's collection today. And with regards to that adjustment, there was no expert skirting of nostalgia. Almost nothing looked new. Which didn't trouble Alexandra Richards, Alison Mosshart, and Sky Ferreira in the least. Such dream clients were all thrilled by what they'd seen. "That's the way I dress anyway," was their party line on the baby dolls, the schoolgirl slips, the vintage florals, the random mash-ups of sloppy cardigans, plaid shirts, and sparkly dresses accessorized with ironic strings of pearls and black bows, fishnets and biker boots. All well and good, and money in the bank for retailers etc., etc., but anyone expecting the frisson of the future that Slimane once provided would have to feel let down yet again.
At the odd moments when he allowed it to happen—as in a cutaway jacket over a plaid shirt over slashed black leather cuissardes—there was a glimpse of the kind of rigorous sensibility that hybridized passion and fashion into an irresistible force at Dior Homme.But wouldn't it be radical if Slimane was actually saying that there is nothing new under the fashion sun, that all that ultimately exists is the energy and inspiration you derive from those elements of the past that you value and love. The same kind of fanboy ardor makes, say, Shibuya 109 in Tokyo or Trash and Vaudeville in New York such wonderful retro romps. This collection will undoubtedly send orgasmic tremors through such places.
3 March 2013
Hedi Slimane set up his new Saint Laurent collection in a cavernous second-floor space at the Grand Palais last night, at the tail end of the Couture shows. Not all brands can be bothered to create a sense of occasion when it comes to pre-fall. The season has turned into a two-month-long slog of showroom appointments. Slimane deserves some credit for finally sending it out in style.According to his press representatives, the designer conceived the collection as a rock star's wardrobe. Not unlike his menswear show of a few days ago, it was unapologetically young, with an emphasis on the casual. The floor-sweeping capes of his Spring debut were out, and leather pelmet minis—more belt than skirt—were in. On the sweeter side of the story, Peter Pan-collared, sixties-ish minidresses had a schoolgirl vibe, even if they weren't that innocent in black-on-black. Blue jeans, fringed leather jackets, shrunken blazers with elbow patches, and toggle coats rounded out the offerings.All of it was polished, but only the pantsuits and the smokings—skinny and scalpel-sharp, as is the Slimane way—seemed to connect overtly with the house's legacy. What kind of role heritage will play in the new Saint Laurent is very much an open question. Whether or not its past—which means so much to France—should be part of its future will be debated forever. To this editor, luxed-up basics like the tailoring (less so the schoolgirl stuff) seem like a smart foundation upon which to rebuild a brand.
24 January 2013
If it wasn't exactly a manifesto—the show last October for his first women's collection had already fulfilled that function—Hedi Slimane's menswear debut consolidated his OCD approach to his gig at Saint Laurent. His manipulation of every minuscule detail leading up to and surrounding the show practically guaranteed anticlimax. The invitation? A visual journal by L.A. polymath aesthete Brian Roettinger. The model casting? Unheard-of indie band members from England, France, and the U.S. The music? Something by SF muso Ty Segall, which managed to combine the garage racket of the Stooges with the primitive electronic howl of Hawkwind. The set? A whirling industrial construct, Conrad Shawcross meetsClose Encounters. All of that added up to shoulda-been-fabulous. But we're forgetting about the clothes. And maybe Slimane did, too.The kindest thing to be said about Slimane's first official men's collection was that he made a guy to go with his girl. If Kate Moss was the ideal woman for the satanic L.A. gypsy he presented for Spring, her husband, Jamie Hince, would surely do full justice to the rock avatar Slimane marched down his men's catwalk for Fall. You don't even want to go there with the skinny; that is already such a cliché in the lexicon of Slimanery. "Slim man," geddit? This was just as much about the plaid shirts, distressed jeans, drainpipe leathers, trailing leopard-print scarves, girlfriend's bits and pieces (cue Julia Nobis and company on the runway to underscore the androgyny), vintage coats and cavalry jackets…a rock prototype that can be traced from its origins with the Strolling Bones back in the Dark Ages of geetar bands all the way through its elucidation by an endless number of bastard spawn up to the jangly here and now, although Nirvana are a particularly pointy way station. All of it is thrilling in theory and practice, but it was a surreal incongruity to see it spotlit in a very expensive fashion presentation. Slimane's passion for the music he loves, the bands that make that music, and the lifestyle that surrounds it is entirely understandable, laudable, and well served with integrity by his photographic tributes. When he spun his ardor into high fashion today, it made a lot less sense, especially as the kids who are the prime components of his vision can already shop this look for zilch down the funky end of any L.A. boulevard.
19 January 2013
Through all his years at Dior Homme, Hedi Slimane always knew how to create a sense of occasion. His womenswear debut for the newly rechristened Saint Laurent took place in the Grand Palais, possibly the most magnificent exhibition space in Paris, except that Slimane led his audience up single-file escalators and down singularly un-magnificent administrative corridors before they happened upon the sepulchral rectangle of show space. A trick! As klieg lights rotated and Daft Punk's electronics pulsed, the ceiling closed in, shifting hydraulically into a new configuration. It was a spectacularly ominous effect, like a techno overture to…what? A promise of the future? A man who can reshape space is surely capable of such.Not the case tonight. Post-show, Betty Catroux, longtime muse to Yves himself, was delirious with delight, proclaiming Slimane the savior for all womankind. But a reality check suggested something less grandiose, more in tune with the way Slimane has been spending his time since he left fashion five years ago. In the City of Angels, to be precise. True, he hot-wired himself into the YSL legacy with Le Smoking, the mousselines, the pussy bows, the shot of animal spot, and that thing called Saharienne (which will always be Veruschka inVogue). The tassels said Morocco—they also said Opium, à la Yves.But it felt like the real mood of the collection was dictated by Slimane's L.A. sojourn. The pared-to-the-bone rock-chick look—with its legging-slender pants and tiny sequined jackets—was one facet. The other, deeper reference was the city's plangent, occult pull. The women on Slimane's catwalk today looked like the witchy covens who'd surround rock groups in the sixties/seventies heyday of the Strip. Or maybe even earlier, when the artist Cameron seduced the stalwarts of the Ferus Gallery. The floor-sweeping, full-sleeve dresses had the deeply gothic tinge that is peculiar to L.A. With the models' faces uniformly shaded by wide-brimmed hats, it seemed that witchy seduction was the agenda of the evening. A bizarre way to stake a claim to one of fashion's most unimpeachable legacies, maybe, but it felt perfectly in tune with what one could legitimately claim to be Slimane's California obsession. And the clothes struck a major chord with the babes in the audience—the Kills' Alison Mosshart claimed she was ready to take afourthjob to afford them.
30 September 2012
Stefano Pilati couldn't have known his days as the house's designer were numbered when he presented his men's collection for Yves Saint Laurent in June, but the way he dipped into YSL's dark side—the one personified by the designer's relationship with the arch-decadent Jacques de Bascher—prophetically hinted at an end game.And Pilati extended that same mood into his women's collection, the last he'll show for Saint Laurent. The wasp-waisted, fetishistic discipline, the leather, the martial strictness of Guido Palau's slicked-back hair combined with the vampiric gloss of Pat McGrath's blood-red lip were components of a powerful, hard-edge dominatrix fashion fantasy. Backless dresses in a chain mail made of metal and rubber were the ultimate expression of Pilati's hypersexualized vision. So he naturally picked the calla lily, Roman symbol of lust, as the floral accent for the collection. (Ironic footnote: Calla lilies were also the flowers laid on the graves of those who suffered an untimely demise.)The burnished backdrop, the gold paneling on the walls, established a kind of imperial, pagan tone against which Pilati could parade his broad-shouldered nightlife Amazons. There is something inevitably glamorous about that look. Many kids like Pilati were conditioned by adolescences spent poring over pictures of YSL, Warhol, and their gang idling away glittering nights. But there'd always be a grim, hard-lit dawn. And yet with that dawn would also come the promise of a new day. Maybe that's why, when he appeared to a stomping ovation, Pilati seemed so cheerful.
4 March 2012
Stefano Pilati's pre-fall collection started where his men's show for Yves Saint Laurent left off: with leather. Look number one was a trench that married a charcoal wool-cashmere flannel upper with a glossy black leather skirt. But unlike the men's show, this was no extended riff on Robert Mapplethorpe.Rather, it was a love letter to the YSL oeuvre, with Pilati reinterpreting Saint Laurent classics for today. Leopard spots are just about as synonymous with the house as the trench; what gave them new life was how he filtered them through an urban lens, laser-cutting them onto a coat's lapels for a subtle, bas-relief effect, or boldly embroidering them in bronze silk thread and matching sequins on a black evening coat.The designer's own staples got an airing, too. The success of Spring 2011's evening jumpsuits prompted a reprisal, but this time around Pilati showed them for day with matching blazers or bow-neck blouses. Another blast from the past went back a few years more: This season's shoe is a Tribute 2 heel with a loafer last that he first introduced at his YSL debut for Spring 2005. Like the originals from seven years ago, these looked like they could be a hit.
21 January 2012
Power—who has it? who's losing it?—is an international obsession. This season, it's also a fashion preoccupation, possibly because there hasn't been a time in living memory when so many people had so little of it. Stefano Pilati's latest show for Yves Saint Laurent focused on power's fashion-friendly handmaidens: sex and money. Pilati managed to weave his themes into the heritage of the house. Back in the days when sex ruled the underground, it was, according to Pilati, more powerful than money. Now there's no more underground, but there are still photos of Saint Laurent in the seventies, looking and feeling transgressive in his big black coat. So that was where Pilati took his collection.The setting he created was the place where sex and money came to play—the art world. A huge Twombly-esque chalkboard backdrop was actually a smudgy transcript of a Warhol interview. The staticky electronica of Scanner on the soundtrack was collaged with art-world legend Sam Wagstaff discussing the mechanics of collecting. And the style of Wagstaff's boyfriend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, slowly insinuated itself into the show.Half of the collection was founded on precise military-influenced tailoring, like the peacoats and cavalry coats, some with luxuriant fur trims, and the double-breasted jackets. In this context, they were the lingua franca of wealthy men, but Pilati perverted their authority with black leather, the currency of fetishistic sex. He started stealthily with a leather trim, a lapel, a collar, then added quilted shoulders, tees, waistcoats. Money may talk loudest now, but Pilati allowed it to be overwhelmed by sex. Mapplethorpe's self-portrait in a biker jacket set the tone. The key details were buckles and straps. Shoes were cased in metal. Picture the clothes on Mapplethorpe's models and you saw how close to the bone Pilati had gotten. He had a brigade of unthreatening male models instead, but a sweater with a razor-blade motif (another Mapplethorpe element) suggested a sinister subtext: the unthreatening surface concealing the lethally hard edge.
19 January 2012
The shoes! The shoes! Front-rowers Kylie Minogue and Elettra Wiedemann could barely tear their eyes away from the footwear during the Yves Saint Laurent show today. Paradisiacal for the shoe guy, problematic for the clothing guy. Although maybe the haute bourgeois collection that Stefano Pilati delivered was designed to emphasize fetishistic extremes. In its allegiance to YSL's classic codes, the one it cleaved to tightest wasBelle de Jour, the bon chic, bon genre babe with the dark side. It was all there in the sepulchral color palette, in the couture volumes, in the restraint and release of scarf tops and kicky little godet skirts. The painted lips and hair held tight by a half-moon of Barbary gold took the message and ran with it.It was a curious collection under the circumstances. An unusually unsettled, even sadistic atmosphere prevails in fashion at the moment, with some designers, Pilati among them, compelled to create clothes under the rumored threat of imminent replacement. That would be a perfect moment to go for broke. Instead, he denied whatever emotion he is surely feeling right now with precisely proportioned clothes in tones as muted as the loden green that colored a fair number of pieces. The low-key eroticism of Frederic Sanchez's soundtrack offered a cue for something a little more passionate, but Pilati didn't take it. Shame.
2 October 2011
North Africa is the root of the Yves Saint Laurent saga. It's where Yves himself was born, it's the well he went back to time and again. Now it seems to serve the same function for Stefano Pilati. His new men's collection had a palette of sand and sky, while the mood of the clothes, alternately tribal and military, suggested a European gone native (it's the Paul Bowles reference again).Khaki drill is a shade of the season. Pilati showed it in a trench or baggy pleated shorts that could have been lifted from the trunk of Rommel's desert rats. A double-breasted coat with a pleated back and a white blouson with a funnel neck also spoke to Sahara-based commando units. They even had their reptile in the dunes, in the form of a python-printed blouson and a pair of cargo shorts.The show opened with a display of precise double-breasted tailoring, until Pilati introduced the threat that it could be literally undone with a swath of drawstrings and laces trailing up the forearms of a white shirt, on a drill tee and matching shorts, and linking the halves of a birfurcated jacket. The detail seemed a little incongruous. Was it an ambiguous implication of male corsetry? A reference to the lacing of nomadic tribes? A forced effort to inject visual interest? Either way, it would scarcely have been cause for comment if Pilati had cast his net wider with the collection. As it was, the 25-look show felt focused almost out of existence. There was one story here: a hold-on-fast feeling of self-control. Maybe that's why the shoes were so striking. Chunky python loafers were all about letting go.
23 June 2011
Is there a designer on the planet who hasn't heeded the siren call of the sea when the Resort season rolls around? Well, now you can add Stefano Pilati to the list. With the film director Kathryn Bigelow and the ballet choreographer and new face of YSL's Homme Libre fragrance Benjamin Millepied looking on from the front row, Pilati sent out a cruise collection that was ascroisièreas it gets, complete with lanyard necklaces, rope-print dresses, and sailor jackets and pants. Afterward, the designer pointed out that Yves Saint Laurent did a nautical collection of his own around 1982. "He showed it with sheer stockings and pumps, and I loved the 'why not?' factor," Pilati said. Sheer hose and pumps were out for 2012, though, and bared legs and high wooden wedges that had commercial hit written all over them were in.The anchor motif, on the other hand, threatened to weigh down a collection that otherwise delivered plenty of signature Pilati oomph and sophistication via puff-sleeved blouses, high-waisted flaring pants, easy dresses with billowing volumes at the back, and one sharp red trench. The poppy prints were more subtle, and the breezy gowns that closed the show will find customers both seaside and in the city.
31 May 2011
Stefano Pilati consolidated his Spring breakthrough with a sensational new collection for Yves Saint Laurent that was as tightly controlled as the models' chignons. Backstage, he listed a whole lot of years he'd been looking at in the house archives—from 1962 to the late seventies—but history was ultimately irrelevant in the light of the results. Yes, the double-breasted coat-dress in the Prince of Wales check, clasped at the waist with a half-belt, ending at mid-thigh, had an early-sixties precision, just as the sweeping palazzo-panted volumes of the finale reeked of late-seventies fabulousity, but Pilati distilled decades into a single strong statement that spoke of the here and now. On some level, it probably worked because he's successfully isolated the genes he shares with Yves, which meant there was more instinct at work than before. But no need to try to get inside Pilati's head; suffice it to say that these were rigorously elegant, superchic, and sexy clothes.In his pre-fall collection, the designer was inspired by YSL's "Opium" era. He claimed he didn't want to let that go, hence the vintage Bianca Jagger moments in this show. But his experience with his Fall menswear was also significant. The lean, boyish silhouette of that outing clearly influenced Pilati's experiments with the most familiar codes of haute bourgeois dressing—a skirtsuit, sweater, and pants; fabrics as classic as a dogtooth or a Prince of Wales check. He dissected them: deconstructing, reconstructing, exploding patterns but, for the most part, keeping dimensions ultra-lean. The monochrome palette helped. Colored sequined motifs were an unnecessary distraction, especially in comparison to a look as tensely sensual as the cape over a sleeveless jumpsuit with a halterneck in chiffon.The final sequence came in blinding white. A blouse stock-tied at the neck, full-sleeved, paired with a skirt falling decorously to the knee, was totally see-through. Freja Beha Erichsen's final outfit—a huge marabou bubble, a sheer blouse with a collar that was almost clerical, palazzo pants bound by a big glittering bow at the waist—struck a balance between sacred and profane. That kind of equilibrium seemed like the essence of YSL—and Pilati, too.
6 March 2011
Following his trawl throughYves Saint Laurent's greatest bits for Spring, Stefano Pilati's pre-fall outing zeroed in on one particularly spectacular moment in Yves's particularly spectacular career: the epochal Opium couture collection from 1977. Though he was obviously unable to duplicate the decadent opulence of the original, Pilati adapted a key print from the archive and incorporated hints of Orientalia, subtle in a quilted cape and an embossed leather jacket, more obvious in a black leather dress with a samurai shoulder and frog closings.Pilati is developing into an astute channeler of Saint Laurent's glory days. The chemisiers and tailleurs were very much in-the-spirit-of. The high-waisted box-pleated skirt, the belted cape-dress, the cropped pants, the culottes—all captured YSL's innate feel for the haute bourgeoisie. The fabrics (particularly a dry wool tricotine) and the colors (fuchsia, jade, emerald) also evoked the mid-seventies of Opium. The look is as potent now as it was then, even more so when Pilati reconfigured Le Smoking as a wide-legged jumpsuit.
24 January 2011
Defining theYSLman: That's the challenge Stefano Pilati said he was meeting with his new collection. This creature is elusive, possibly because Yves Saint Laurent himself gave little direction other than the clothes in his own closet. It's not at all like the prodigious legacy the designer left with his womenswear. But Pilati remains determined to pin down his target. He was feeling a more body-conscious silhouette for Fall. Accordingly, almost everything about the collection, including details like lapels, felt elongated and slenderized. Even a felted blouson was drawn in to the body. The exception was the oversize outerwear, although its volume had the effect of emphasizing the slimness of what lay beneath. So did the very substantial footwear, raised up on ridged, camo-patterned soles.Pilati also wanted to convey a new sophistication for YSL's menswear. He felt subtlety was key. So shadow plaids barely hinted at pattern in a couple of jackets, and the structured shoulder was achieved without any padding whatsoever. What the lean, boyish silhouette felt like more than anything else was Carnaby Street in the sixties. The high-closing, double-breasted, velvet-collared Edwardian jackets had a strong flavor of the London dandies of the time. But Pilati insisted the influence was closer to home. Rather than anything connected with London, he said he'd been dipping back into Proust, the virtual Bible of all things Saint Laurent.
22 January 2011
It was inevitable that the epic Saint Laurent exhibition, which recently closed after a six-month run in Paris, would make its presence felt in fashion this season. It certainly put the man who holds the reins at the house that Yves built in a reflective mood. In a blazingly focused, tightly edited show, Stefano Pilati revisited the Yves Saint Laurent codes one by one: beginning with a trenchcoat and building—naturally—to Le Smoking, in crepede soir. In between came bowed blouses, blasts of color, cabans,paysanneruffles, clouds of marabou, long forties lines, exotica, erotica, and more. It was a comprehensive guided tour of the YSL universe. And the location—a Rothschildhôtel particulierin the eighth—was a simpatico venue, its gilded, frescoed salons instantly creating a more appropriate, intimate mood than the cavernous glory of the Grand Palais, where Pilati had been showing for a while.Speaking of simpatico, the clothes Pilati offered to an audience that ran the gamut from Janet Jackson to Florence Welch (minus her Machine for a fashion night out) underscored his instinctive connection to the fundamental ethos of the house. You could pose it as a face-off: restraint versus release. The specter ofBelle de Jourhovers over such a notion, but here it was as simple as black and white, if you considered the pristine glare of that opening trench versus the inky blackness of the last jumpsuit. But Pilati also proposed a blouse that was proper bordering on prim, bar the fact that it was completely sheer, and a jumpsuit that turned out to be backless. The subtle baring of skin was something of a leitmotif, with the slit skirt or the exposed midriff. It fitted with the tribalism Pilati was talking about afterward: how fashion is a way for women to identify themselves, just as members of a tribe do. He made the connection explicit with a print that was—literally—thumbprints, or a texture that looked a little like scarified skin. The sophisticated, the primitive—again, restraint and release. It added up to a collection that should resonate loud and long for Pilati.
3 October 2010
Stefano Pilati went back to North Africa for his new collection, specifically the milieu of the American writer Paul Bowles, whose life in Tangier became a benchmark for outsiders everywhere. Pilati's is a different sort of fascination with Morocco than the love affair with Marrakech that Saint Laurent, the house's founder, enjoyed.The sober palette; the coats and jackets drawn in with a belt; the high-waisted, pleated pant; the Bakelite sunglass frames all refracted the dress sense of a man with mildly bohemian leanings in the forties, the decade in which Bowles began his self-imposed exile. Pilati, though, mutated it with North African references. The side vents of the jackets were slit so they opened like a djellaba, the footwear was sandals, and some of the models wore fezes. There were smock shirts, accents of leopard spot, and a black silk tunic. A single print was a little like an abstracted version of midday sun glaring through wooden blinds. Any of this you could imagine as part of the semi-assimilated Bowles' wardrobe. The bubble shorts, worn high and belted, looked more like the kind of item sported by his wife, Jane, which meant they injected some of the sexual ambiguity that Pilati favors in his work.Pilati showed just 25 looks, and from the fluid tailoring to the tunic to the leopard, it felt like he was revisiting his greatest hits. When this designer dropped in on Bowles last time, it was a radically different time in the world, and he was riding high. The trip back seemed like a man returning to the scene of earlier triumphs in a reflective mood. A littletriste, perhaps.
24 June 2010
Is Stefano Pilati lightening up? The Yves Saint Laurent Resort collection he showed in New York today was a much less sober affair than his last ready-to-wear outing, and very welcome for it. The presentation took place in the tony Upper East Side environs of the French Consulate, a fitting setting for a collection that felt thoroughly Gallic in spirit. Picking up a theme from his Fall runway but interpreting it differently here, the designer turned the pendant silhouettes he made from old YSL images into bold floral prints, splashing them down the side of a nipped-waist silk dress or across the front of a slim above-the-knee skirt worn with a delicate blouse.The clothes, not unlike those he showed in March, hinted at the seventies, with high-waist trouser suits for day, and for evening, a white and black bandeau paired with a floor-scraping black skirt. This time around, though, he injected vibrant shades of coral, lilac, and fuchsia (quintessential Saint Laurent colors), along with darling butterfly and clover prints for little shirtwaist frocks and flared jumpsuits, and witty stacked-heel espadrille sandals."Always within myself there's the big debate—how can you avoid references but at the same time be respectful," Pilati said, looking dapper and relaxed in an open-necked shirt and red neckerchief with a violet in his lapel. In the case of Resort's sexy smoking jacket worn with bloomer shorts, sheer hose, and gold crystal-studded heels, he embraced the YSL legacy but added his own of-the-moment twist. It was the show's big hit.
2 June 2010
Stefano Pilati categorically denied there was any religious symbolism in his Fall show. Nevertheless, the sober caped black forms, wimplelike head coverings, starched white cotton, hoods, and heavy chain pendants gave a nunlike impression. Granted, it wasn't literal, but there was something of the Catholic convent in the high white dog collar on a suit, the yoked white blouse with full sleeves, the prim and modest mid-calf dresses—and the way a cardinal purple cape made an appearance at one point. Even when a sheer black dress came out, there was a cross to bare beneath it: underwear formed as a cruciform bodysuit.But that wasn't the gloss Pilati put on it at all. "It's about protection," he said after the show, explaining the plastic film he put over coats and inserted in patches in jackets. "And partly, an homage to YSL and the rigorous tailleur." As for the figures dangling on the gold chains that swung and bumped on the lower body as the models walked? He said he'd taken those from silhouettes of Saint Laurent fashion photos he'd cut out of seventies magazines.Still, this collection was sometimes tricky to fathom. It was best in the simplest and strongest pieces: seventies-influenced shapes, like the high-waist flared trousers, capes, mid-calf skirts; the smart slash-sleeved jacket; and the jumpsuits—all ideas that look timely in the context of this season's trends.But perhaps a more explanatory perspective would be the one taken from the Petit Palais, just opposite the YSL show venue, where a major retrospective of the work of the late Yves Saint Laurent is about to open. Thus far, Pilati has avoided creating comparisons to the master's archive, striving instead to make statements of his own about redefining the wardrobe for the twenty-first century. Oddly enough, if he relaxed more into channeling the way Saint Laurent nailed how the working woman wanted to dress in the Parisian seventies—as so many other designers are now—it might be an easier path.
7 March 2010
There are two ways of looking at pre-fall in terms of what it means in the great relay race of fashion. A designer can follow through on designs from the season before, but also perhaps start trying out ideas that will determine the look of the next show. In YSL's extensive new collection, Stefano Pilati had plenty of scope for both. The follow-throughs were easy to identify: Take, for instance, the rose motif that was shrunken and woven into jacquards on soft suits, three-quarter coats, and strapless dresses, or a group of charcoal gray double-breasted coat-dresses and suits that touched on the militaria trend.Anyone with a hankering for rushing ahead will, however, want to study Pilati's ankle-length A-line skirt, wide-leg pants, and draped wrap satin dress. Whether the Saint Laurent seventies that these pieces referenced is a fleeting transitional moment or something Pilati will commit to for Fall, they were the most interesting pieces in the collection.
25 January 2010
Style.com did not review the Fall 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
21 January 2010
The drive toward, as the Yves Saint Laurent program notes put it, "a natural and honest chic, an aesthetic paradigm of new minimalism" is picking up speed during the Paris shows. Stefano Pilati, whose intellectual aspirations always lead him to think long and hard about contemporaneity, is one whose natural urge is to belong to that vanguard. But what does it actually involve in his case? A stark, monochrome pencil-skirted suit and an austere tuxedo? Or a pair of conceptual lederhosen and a romantic, strawberry-scattered dress? For Spring, YSL had both. And that was odd.The logic linking the two (if not more) sides of the collection was hard to see. Some of it appeared to stem from the Saint Laurent archive, albeit at a great remove: the strawberries, flounces, and peasant influences can be traced back to the seventies, though Pilati's bunchy off-the-shoulder dresses were abstracted from the source and eroticized with black leather short shorts and fishnet stockings. But there wasn't enough of it to get into any sort of stride, and when a single white sleeveless coat-dress appeared with what seemed to be purple djellaba embroidery on the shoulder, it was an idea that was left hanging, without further development.On the other hand, there were more easily understood city dresses and suitings—like a regular periwinkle long-sleeved linen dress and the belted white pantsuit that opened the show—interspersed with a continuation of the edgy black leather pieces Pilati showed last winter. Then, to add to it all, there was a reversion to some of the clerical references he brought up at the beginning of his tenure: surplicelike sleeves, priestly white blouses, and almost ceremonial minimized capes.The parts will likely separate into perfectly sellable working-woman pieces for the stores, and the more edgy elements will get bundled off to editorial shoots. But in terms of a cohesive statement, they never quite seemed to relate.
4 October 2009
Stefano Pilati said he was partly inspired by seashells, but there wasn't anything overtly beachy about his Resort lineup for Yves Saint Laurent. Rather, the designer's stated influence informed the collection's subtle prints and the circular cuts of looks like a chic bronze silk cocktail dress (part of a new Editions Soir mini evening line). The theme also found a quiet echo in the spiraling Lesage embroidery at the shoulders of printed shifts and a long, gauzy white dress.Everything—even the tailoring, which has been such a Pilati strong suit these last several seasons—had a certain fluidity. A deconstructed, unlined jacket topped a bustier dress, while the classic YSL trench was reworked with a shawl collar and trumpet cuffs. The designer cut an evening bolero inspired by couture in topaz cotton—"it's less pretentious that way," he said. Not to mention more modern.
8 June 2009
"I have to reflect the times, and this really is my mood," said Stefano Pilati. The impact of the resized economy, which has scattered much of Paris fashion week to grungy suburban venues and induced nervy, vacillating results on many runways, only produced a positive response in this house. Shown in close-up on a narrow walkway around an upper gallery in the centrally located Palais de Tokyo, the presentation—like the clothes themselves—was fully concentrated on demonstrating a confident vision of modern city wardrobing. It was monochrome, but far from down, with a particular Pilati-esque superchic Frenchness filtered through the YSL codes of black leather, gray flannel, pristine white shirting, and, of course, Le Smoking.Pilati had taken the idea of the motorcycle jacket (a Saint Laurent landmark piece from his early collection for Christian Dior) to kick-start his design process. The show opened with black leather, some of it textured with thermo-molding technology borrowed from the car industry. There was a touch of eroticism (a zippered bodysuit would have thrilled Helmut Newton), but the material was mainly used to construct sleek, though not too close-fitting, pieces for everyday street wear. From there, Pilati worked into the flannel and chalk stripes, developing the most elegantly desirable pants (no more Japanese drop-crotch extremes) and cutting jackets with an unpadded extended shoulder.There was no falling back on the all-too-easy clichés of the eighties that have beset many other collections. That was down to the effort Pilati put into honing the tailoring into new but accessible shapes. A mannish blazer—big in the shoulder, narrow in the hips—was conceived for adaptability; the designer imagined how it could be worn over a skirt, dress, leggings, or on its own over opaque tights (and no ordinary tights—close-up, some of them had achangeantgreen-black sheen; others had fishnet fused into the surface). Within this new clarity of thinking, Pilati turned out coats with curviform hems, paneled skirts with a coolly sexy flip in the hem, and crisp white blouses with complex volumes in the sleeve. It was "ordinary," practical dressing, in a way, but done with all the savoir faire of a Parisian powerhouse.Pilati's concise message left no room for grandiose evening gestures, though there were a couple of short, simple, and desirable velvet dresses, with a subtle sparkle applied through metallic flocking.
He had also thought about day-to-night usefulness, weaving a low-shine lamé thread into multitasking charcoal dresses and jumpsuits that could be worn to work or out to dinner. The show concluded not with miles of red-carpet chiffon destined for one-night-only appearances but with a black tuxedo coat-dress, loosely buttoned over: the sort of piece Pilati foresees a woman keeping in her wardrobe forever. "Of course we have evening dresses, always, at Saint Laurent," he said. "But I think timelessness is a good message for now, no?"
8 March 2009
The Yves Saint Laurent pre-fall collection was an extension of the austere, mostly monochrome experiments in volume Stefano Pilati has been working on since last Fall. That was quite apparent in the rounded shapes, double-faced fabrics, and shades of gray and black. What's new, Pilati said, is the effort to mimic super-luxurious materials in less expensive fabrics—like a papery lizard print that appeared on everything from an evening column to georgette scarves, or raw-edged chiffon intended to suggest fur. Not that the genuine article has gone missing—there were shaved astrakhan jumpers, too. But with this transitional season, Pilati is mindful that fashion is going to have to get smarter about the making—and selling—of luxury.
26 January 2009
As it faces up to a world of dramatically reconfigured priorities, what action should fashion take to stay relevant? Should designers be paring back, or keep pushing the new? On YSL's runway, that tension surfaced. "I felt for an extreme simplicity," Stefano Pilati said, "but it has to be feminine and a bit audacious. Lifting the spirits was making sense to me." His solution was to play it both ways, with Japanese-inflected austerity on the one hand, and no surrender over risk-taking shapes and hotly desirable shoes on the other.The Orientalist-modernist mix came out in the towering lacquered chignons and soft, cocooning shapes that had been derived from kimono wrapping and Japanese fishermen's pants. Pilati can claim authority over the drop-crotch trouser: He started it, and now that it's entered the mainstream he's edging it further along into fluid, baglike shorts, rompers, and jumpsuits. If that sounds awful, by the end of the show the concept of a garment that happens to be joined between the knees—worn with buttoned-up shirts or tailored jackets—had gained a degree of visual inevitability that might be a staging post on the way to normality. (Fearless young stylists have already been sporting their own versions of them around the shows this week, so that's another sign.)In any case, there were aspects of the show that didn't insist on pushing that particular nether-parts envelope. At some points, Pilati stepped up to answer the call for the kind of reassuring, regular Parisian chic women demand from YSL. An amazing asymmetric black dress with volume gathered up in a drawstring bow in the back did that, as did several pale gray regular pantsuits, and, for someone racier, reworkings of "Saharien" jackets with the cross-lacing details running through peplums or up the small of the back.If it didn't have the slam-dunk, uncompromising fashion stance of Pilati's last collection, the riveting new shoeslatticework grids of leather with metal-mesh heelswere enough to score a huge hit. First, they were walkable; second, they represent a coolly modern collision of the airiness of multi-strapped gladiators with the look of a boot. In a season when so much footwear has limped off runways to muttered protests from female audiences, that point alone puts YSL in the lead.
1 October 2008
The many chromosomal combinations that define gender beyond the bald male-female categorization are scarcely the stuff of fashion inspiration. Until now. The fluidity of gender was precisely the starting point for Stefano Pilati's provocative new men's collection for YSL. Bottom line: He used women's fabrics to make clothes for men. Everything—coats, jackets, pants—looked familiar, but felt extraordinarily soft, sinuous, unstructured. And, to sustain the illusion, Pilati chose to present his clothes in a video treatise rather than a show. In seven short films, the actor Jack Huston was called upon to embody various facets of the collection's concept. But with his blank, wide face, he wasn't perhaps the best ambassador for Pilati's subversive intent. The style of the films themselves, with their underground echoes of Warhol, Godard, and Kenneth Anger, was more successful.And, fortunately for Pilati, the clothes were better than either. One piece spoke volumes: a biker jacket in washed silk gazar. Brando gone Balenciaga—a good reason why Pilati is such a fascinating designer. As well as gazar, there was organza in a blouson, voile in shirts, silk in suits, and the kind of gold beading last seen in Liza Minnelli's stagewear. But everything (okay, everything except for the beads) looked entirely masculine. Until you touched it, anyway. Aside from the technical feats of construction involved in working with such light fabrics, there was also a real insight in an idea such as a tailored jacket whose cuffs closed like a shirt. It embodied the formal/casual essence of the best modern dressing.
25 June 2008
They looked like an army of futuristic female automata, marching out in identical black-bowl wigs and black lipstick, some with their eyes blanked out by narrow slivers of wraparound sunglasses. The clothes they wore were equally uncompromising: stark planes of tweed, felt, and flocked fabric, precision-sliced into geometric angles and unfamiliar volumes.It made one of the season's most joltingly dramatic contributions to the current dialogues about tailoring and austerity. If there were elements of the eighties or Italian futurism in there—like the banana-shaped high-waist pants or the curviform layers of scroll-like volumes in skirts—it wasn't Stefano Pilati's intention to be referential. "I just wanted it to be about cut, about looking at the clothes," he said. "I don't think you want to go out advertising a brand anymore. You just want to feel proud walking down the street."That reductionism certainly had the force of conviction about it, and it threw up some fine pieces, like jackets with swaggering, flying tails and small-waisted dresses with geometric stand-out skirts. Something about the carapace stiffness of these garments, the sense that the clothes are molded rather than fitted, puts Pilati in line with other designers, like Nicolas Ghesquière, who are pushing fashion away from the body and toward something new. In Pilati's case, the impact—with its almost complete abnegation of romanticism and traditional femininity—was a shock. Still, fashion sorely needs those who dare, and this is a collection whose controversial content and implications will be discussed and dissected for months to come.
27 February 2008
Stefano Pilati has clearly been thinking about the positive response he gets from people in the art world, because he decided to dispense with orthodoxy this season and create an artifact a little more enduring than a 15-minute fashion show. Working with filmmakers from a London company called Colonel Blimp (who've made videos for Massive Attack, among others), he produced a seven-minute film featuring British actor Simon Woods running, jumping, and standing still across three screens. Michel Gaubert provided a soundtrack that swirled Lou Reed and Portishead into an intense stew. Add Saint Laurent's own friendship with Andy to the mix, and there was a Warholian undercurrent to the whole enterprise.It was an impression that was compounded by the clothes, the most spectacular of which wouldn't have been out of place on the denizens of the transcontinental scene that swarmed around the nightspots of New York and Paris in the late sixties and early seventies (and there was no spot morenightthan Warhol's Factory). The black lacquered leather jacket lined in sheepskin, the Mongolian lamb coat, and the crushed velvet blazers had a casual extravagance that would be a siren call for wannabe superstars in any era. But that's Pilati's spirit. He's been pushing proportions to move menswear away from the cheese-straw silhouette of the early Noughties. Here, he added heady color to amplify his effort. So an unstructured felt coat was writ large in a sunshine yellow, and a biker jacket was generously recut in green wool. A wide-collared blanket-striped coat was piped in red, and softer, heathery shades colored immaculately tailored blazers.By now, it's clear that Pilati's collections thrive on a split personality that reflects the designer's own idiosyncrasies. So a plaid cashmere blazer and a huge knit duffel coat comfortably coexisted in the same collection, as did the blue suede brothel creepers and the black leather oxfords. A collarless shirt with a felt appliqué of a thunderstorm had an almost childish charm, but Pilati's shawl-collared jackets in ice-cream tones were the height of sophistication. Both of them were equally desirable. There's an essential Warholian duality for you.
17 January 2008
"I just started with three thoughts: blazers, sweatshirts, and a vaguely preppy idea," said Stefano Pilati, "and then it went into thinking about goddesses, stars." For many women in the audience, though, there was only one thought: at last, a jacket. In a season when so much of fashion has fallen for flowers, ruffles, and neo-hippie fantasy, YSL offered none of it. Instead, Pilati continued to steer the house toward the "post-minimalist elegance" he started out on last Fall.Pilati is right to intuit the need for a creative approach to tailoring (it's gone more or less missing since Helmut Lang left the stage), and correct to feel that Rive Gauche ought to break free from the slavish cycle of reference to Yves. Besides, it's a fact that few things are more difficult to craft than a jacket and a great pair of pants, so what held the interest here were the minutiae of the cap-sleeved tailored vests, hip-length blazers cut with new volumes, and the variously calibrated high-waisted, ankle-cropped trousers. Those, done in blues, grays, and chino beige, were the most striking part in the collection, but Pilati wasn't content to leave it at that. His obsession with reinventing cut also led him to look at asymmetry, so that skirts dipped and blouses and dresses came one-sleeved. The best of these came alive in motion. Subtle darting gave even the strictest combination of a white shirt and skirt a quietly erotic—not to mention chic—impact when seen from behind.There was more in the way of vaguely Vionnet-influenced thirties satin (the goddess symbolism made overt), and the "star" motif manifested in chain-linked reflective plastic breastplates, which came over as a bit nonplussing. Still, credit to Pilati for having the courage to keep on in the direction he believes in. If—to the disappointment of some—this collection wasn't one of those that shakes up the fashion agenda on a grand scale, its subtlety may pay off in the longer run in terms of consistency, and clothes to buy. With each season, it's becoming clearer that Pilati's YSL is on the side of strength, modernity, and the grown-up woman.
3 October 2007
Yves Saint Laurent's Stefano Pilati took an artsy approach to his resort collection, alternating between Jackson Pollock-style paint-splatter prints on items like a satin bomber jacket and more Impressionist watercolors for a pair of floor-length halter dresses. But if color came on strong, so did black and white. An important trend this season, the contrasting shades added a graphic edge to a cropped short-sleeve suit jacket and a belted silk sheath. The show's standout piece was altogether softer, though. Pilati's strapless black lace cocktail number came with a clutch of glossy feathers at the neckline and a big bow at the waist—veryBelle de Jour.
8 July 2007
Baggy, paint-spattered shorts? Droopy, drop-shouldered sweaters? A patched, worn sweatshirt? Stefano Pilati's latest collection seemed designed to inflame those who feel the name of Yves Saint Laurent should stand for the precise, peak-shouldered perfection of the trad French gent. Pilati wasn't having it. Lately, he's been enjoying himself playing in the art world, and it was "a liberated artistic mind" he intended his new designs for. After the show, he said that the paint that spattered clothes and shoes represented "the complete spontaneity that is sometimes missing from fashion."But even liberated minds don't necessarily want to look like Jack the Dripper. And for them, Pilati expanded on the experiment in volume he started with his fall collection. Jackets still had the bigger, softer shoulder, but they were cut shorter, which emphasized their boxiness, even giving them a slightly feminine swing (such ambiguity is emerging as a Pilati signature). In the same spirit, the designer offered a gray twinset with those paint-covered shorts, and a three-quarter-sleeve sweater over a white shirt. (And remember that back-buttoning tunic he proposed last season?) Another signature is a louche exoticism, seen here in pieces patchworked out of traditional Japanese fabrics, or a glazed-linen drawstring coat, or striped pajama pants, just like the ones Pilati himself wore during the eighties. The designer's own dandyism was also evident in shawl-collared jackets, which brought a touch of the evening to daywear, and a jacquard-look jacket that had actually been painstakingly hand-embroidered.
29 June 2007
If there is one connecting principle that ran through Yves Saint Laurent's hottest years, it was the way he picked up the beat of street ideas and transformed them into transcendent cut. For the first time, Stefano Pilati came close to nailing the essence of that bold philosophy, centering his collection on the mission to reshape form and give it a contemporary bite. That clarity of intent produced a fresh silhouette and a new proportion, designed around a precisely engineered upper-body volume—but that's just the technical side. Volume can be overwhelming, fattening, and fashion-victim-y, but here Pilati concentrated on offering chic women—and not just young women—a dashing, long-legged wardrobe eminently cut out for urban living.The news was in the rounded, raglan-sleeved coats and menswear-derived jackets—and a multiplicity of textures scored, stamped, and bubbling up from concrete-gray and black surfaces (who else could make a gray "fur" out of knotted chiffon?). Before now, Pilati's enthusiasm for fabric innovation has run away with him, but he controlled it in the service of elegant shapes that stood away from the body. His jackets, starting with a gray, mannish blazer, captured the idea of "oversized," but tailored it to form a bell-like volume in front—an idea that ended in a couple of sublime tuxedo jackets for evening (put on one of those, add a pair of black opaques, and you can forget the skirt).If the achievement here was partly the sense that Pilati had rejected the burden of quoting too much literal YSL history, he also melded a significant reference into the collection that reached back to the radical beginnings of Saint Laurent's career. The subversive Left Bank spirit of the crocodile thigh boots that so shocked the establishment in the early sixties (and got Yves fired from Dior) rose again in a fiercely chic passage of black shiny nylon-look cloque, black hoods, gauntlets, and dark glasses. It was a timely reminder that all really new ideas are risky at first—before they get absorbed and worn by everyone months later. Pilati himself experienced that in the general panning his first YSL collection received, after which his belts, tulip skirts, and platforms were copied the world over.
There's a chance that the newness in this show might stir up some of the same like-it-loathe-it controversy, but whatever the response, this much is already clear: Few designers in the world are applying themselves to modernity in this way, and that's an energy fashion sorely needs in order to go forward.
28 February 2007
As anyone who has visited a Saint Laurent boutique recently will know, Stefano Pilati has a way with a desirable item. His catwalk concepts seem to blossom once they hit store racks. With his new men's collection, Pilati managed to bring a similar sense of irresistibility back home to the runway. After the show, he used the word "opulence," and a mink sweatshirt, pony blouson, or sweeping black coat with lining quilted in gold had obviously opulent connotations (while being well in keeping with the designer's affection for the decadent ambiguities of the Saint Laurent legacy). But the collection also showed itself in a less literal way—in the exploded dimensions of its tailoring. From the first outfit, with its oatmeal overcoat buttoned high and billowing away like a cape, jackets and coats were voluminous, with soft, dropped shoulders. And their shape was emphasized by narrow, cropped trousers which were shown with both jumbo brothel creepers and sleek little car shoes (now,there'sa choice for you!). Pilati claimed an undercurrent of the eighties in the oversize—"It's me!" he said. Equally him was his other pants option: full, deep-pleated, wide-cuffed. He also showed a new facility with outerwear, which ran the broadest gamut, from an inky nylon coat to a gray wool duffel to a red raglan. Can't wait for those racks.
27 January 2007
Stefano Pilati said he had been inspired by "violets, which to the Greeks symbolized modesty, humility, and virginity—and the feeling of transition from spring into summer." To that end, he laid out one of the prettiest—yet most hazardous—runways ever trodden by models in spike-heel platforms: a deep, earthen lawn planted with hundreds of living purple violas. In theory, it was poetic, but the girls¿ tentative, anxiety-raising progress created an unfortunate distraction that disrupted the viewing of Pilati¿s most beautiful pieces.The best of them came toward the end—a section of gowns in purple or violet-printed chiffon with billowy, flyaway skirts, and the white flower-garlanded halter-necked finale dress, cut to fall erotically away from the back. Pilati¿s conceptual journey to this point was, however, trickier to follow. It started promisingly with black-and-white picnic check, well cut into a tightly belted, slope-shouldered Parisian-chic coat with a high-necked ruffle blouse. The recurring spring-flower theme built into clusters of fragile, white cutout organdy violets in a tuxedo shirt, petal-smothered skirts, and 3-D leather decorations trailing from bags. Other standouts were a black swing-back shirtdress with a white cotton bib; a short nude organza cocktail dress, piped in black; and the odd toughening elements, like belted leather shell tops. The difficulty? In the pants. Like several designers in Paris, Pilati is applying himself to thinking a way out of skinnies. It¿s a project that eventually will reach some attractive conclusion—but his baglike lowering of crotch to ankle is, to put it kindly, not quite there yet.
4 October 2006
With this twisted and riveting collection, Stefano Pilati proved himself a fashion subversive of the first order. It was easy—he simply carried over the back-buttoning tunic he introduced for women last season into his new menswear. Back then, he talked about the sexiness of a woman needing a man to help her in and out of her top. Did something similar apply here? Next spring, will the words on the YSL man's lips be, "Do me up, darling?"The untucked, free-flowing tunic, with its little stand-up collar, worn over slightly cropped pants, was the new collection's strongest look. It established a groovy, late sixties/early seventies Bob Evans-ish vibe that carried through to jeans printed with a pop motif, big knit tops, a suede shirt-jacket, a leather blouson with python inserts, and full leather pants paired with a gauzy top and sandals. One blouson was printed with a crowd scene from the Woodstock love-in in 1969. Pilati insisted it was his way of saying he'd rather be part of the crowd than stand out, but with accessories as exemplary as the ones he showed—not just those sandals, but also moccasins, clogs, embroidered and ethnic metal belts, and fringed-suede booties—any man would be the center of attention.One small caveat: The final passage of eveningwear looked conventional, even slightly stiff, in comparison to everything else. After succumbing to the decadent spell cast by Pilati's designs for day, why on earth would the YSL man suddenly straighten up come nightfall?
3 July 2006
Stefano Pilati's influence has spread exponentially since his first YSL collection, the spring 2005 outing that—right off the bat—launched wide, waist-cinching belts and tulip skirts on the fashion world. Since those are the looks and proportions so many women are living in now, Pilati has become a force whose every subsequent move is analyzed for updates. This season, he articulated the next big shift likely to replace froufrou femininity. He's been thinking, he said, about "powerful clothes women might want to wear. A sort of versatile uniform."Harder and sharper yet just as desirably luxurious, this collection steered more in the direction of the things Catherine Deneuve—not to mention Helmut Newton—enjoyed about YSL in the sixties and seventies: a point spelled out in the slick black PVC trench, leather blouse,maîtressepinafore, form-encasing sequin cocktail dress and the odd suggestive mink pussy-cat bow that punctuated the show. (The fetish-chic elements offered a unique spin on "restraint," this season's buzzword.)Pilati, however, was clever enough not to belabor the oft-repeated S&M mode to communicate his ideas about the new power woman. His most newsworthy contribution here was to make belted, form-fitting tunics, and back-buttoned tops look sexy—possibly for the first time ever. These are plain yet chic clothes (included among them, a shorter, sharper version of his tulip skirt) that can get you to work feeling fab. Yet there's more to Pilati's consideration of what women really want out of their wardrobe—and life—than a dutiful monolithic career suit. As he explained, "You can wear a tunic over narrow pants, with a skirt, or as a dress. And I've seen from watching my sisters how sexy it is to unbutton something at the back. You need a man to help." That's the sort of insight that will take a designer far.
1 March 2006
French actor Pascal Greggory, the butch and bearded poster boy of Yves Saint Laurent's current ad campaign, was in the front row, but it was the music that was the key to Stefano Pilati's latest collection. Little-heard versions ofBoys Keep Swinging(by Billy Mackenzie) andHey Joe(by Marc Almond) set an off-kilter, slightly campy tone. The clothes proceeded to elaborate on this, though in the end, Pilati arguably didn't push things as far as he might have.One of the ideas the designer had in mind was an elegant house party in the Highlands in the 1930s. Imagine a dressy crowd of dandies dealing with a notion as outré as the great outdoors. In their windowpane checks, tweeds, and flannels, they were the essence of sophistication (the broad shoulders and peaked lapels of the jackets, and the cuffed, slightly cropped trousers underlining the thirties edge). Outerwear, meanwhile, ran a surprisingly sensible gamut: waterproof poncho, belted nylon jacket, leather blouson with sheepskin collar.Anyone looking for the rich seam of eccentricity that illuminated Pilati's last outing had to dig deep. There were hints of it in an astrakhan duffel, an alpaca-collared coat in ostrich, a cape lined in lilac satin, and most notably in the large pin that held a jacket tightly around the waist. This touch of quirky make-do elegance felt truest to Pilati himself, and that was the element that was most elusive in this collection. Ultimately, the designer can only make Saint Laurent his own when it tellshisstory.
28 January 2006
Stefano Pilati, the man who emerged from the backroom at YSL Rive Gauche, now has the fashion world waiting with bated breath on his every belt and ruffle. For spring, that waist-cinching belt—the fulcrum of his silhouette—came in woven straw, and the ruffles, once applied to peplums and bustles, were trained to burst from shirt bibs and cascade in bands down the front of his narrow skirts. Pilati's opening look was a pair of matador pants, a frilled shirt and a belt—voilà: Spanish. But, as so often this season, you had to check the ultramodern shoes to get the crucial slant: assertively dramatic metallic platforms with triangular heels sculpted into a steep ridge at the back, like the hull of an ocean liner.The backstory here is that Pilati spent last summer researching Picasso, mulling over Saint Laurent's 1976 Spanish collection, and adding random insights triggered by his preview of the Dada exhibition that opened this week at the Pompidou Centre. "I wanted something more spontaneous and passionate," he said, "with a bit of the industrial." The designer fused all those influences into a confident reiteration of his dressed-up, long-legged, nouveau-French look, drenched in rich color treatments that ran from subtle Cubist shades of beige, ochre, saffron, and black, through to bull's-blood red, purple, and pristine white. Skirts might come cropped above the knee; as long, thigh-clinging pencils; or with a bubbled volume, caught into a narrow flounce; and were balanced with neat, short jackets and a myriad variations on his incredible blouses.This season, Pilati brought a new lightness to his intense interest in surface detail. He compressed the idea of black mantilla lace into spidery-fine trompe l'oeil embroidery that covered a crisp white pencil skirt, and traced the shoulder and neckline of a sheer organdy blouse. Chiffon pompoms bobbled along the flanks of skirts and the edges of the bride's slim white cape, and even some of the bags caught the aerated mood—little boxes made of filigree metal in a Moorish screen pattern. If there was any remaining doubt about the attraction of Pilati's rigorous look, it was comprehensively countermanded by the gathering of fans who had turned up wearing his extreme platforms—the runaway hit of YSL's fall collection. Judging by the chat in the excited crowd afterward, the lines for his bold Dada-moderne shoes are already forming.
8 October 2005
Morocco is a foundation stone of the Saint Laurent legend, and Stefano Pilati is shaping up as a major keeper of the flame, so it sounded logical when YSL's creative director claimed that country as an inspiration for his latest menswear collection. Except that it wasn't Marrakech, where Yves plays house, that Pilati had in mind. Instead, he was thinking of Paul Bowles, the American writer (in)famous for his lifelong artistic and cultural exile in Tangiers.What this meant for Pilati's show was a dialogue between the conventions of Western dress and the concessions an expat might make to local culture. It was most seductive at its most formal, in a tuxedo shown with Moroccan leopard-print slippers, or a butterscotch linen evening jacket trimmed with black passementerie. More casual outfits—a black military shirt paired with matching drawstring pants and a navy turtleneck with spacious white shorts—suggested the nonchalant ease of an American aesthete abroad.Aside from a palette of pale earth and sky tones, Pilati didn't want his Moroccan moment to turn ethnic. Instead of obvious exotic flourishes, he used other clues to suggest the sartorial attitude of a louche urbanite adrift in North Africa: a foulard with a hypertailored sports jacket and waistcoat; full, flat-front, cuffed linen trousers touching the floor; a striking combination of gunmetal trench and chocolate corduroys. One odd touch: Pilati described a belted woolen cardigan with a motif of rearing horses as "constructivist in silhouette." It looked more like Starsky.
5 July 2005
At Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, Stefano Pilati returned to the fray after a weird debut last season. Weird, that is, in the sense of the critical drubbing he received in some quarters, and weirder still (if his tulip skirts and ruffles were so awful) for the fact that they were widely copied this season. Still, the right kind of controversy can be a great thing for an emerging designer's profile, and the audience was packed in, on the edge of its seat, waiting to see whether Pilati would follow through with a collection powerful and personal enough to count as a fashion breakthrough.Intellectually, Pilati is spot on in reading the current mood of restraint. “I think now we want to be chic, considered, and rigorous,” he said. “We want self-respect; and not to show our wealth so much.” To find imagery to anchor the collection, he looked at seventeenth century Flemish paintings of Jansenist nuns and clergy (a Catholic breakaway sect). “The key was that they were so obsessed with clean, perfect, pressed fabric; but there is rich detail in there, too.”That explained why the show, longer, better staged, and more confident than last season, began with modifications of the broad-shoulder suitings of the YSL eighties, and then filtered in ecclesiastical cardinal gowns, clerical surplices, and high, frilled, choirboy collars. Still, the standout looks for day were the simplest ones. A strict black, form-fitting suit with a peplum jacket and a flounce breaking out below the knee cut a subtly erotic line. A yellow sweater, cinched with a wide belt encrusted with seeds, looked great over an egg-shape skirt. A brown blanket-stitched patchwork bolero and a glossy pony coat both exuded must-have originality.Midway, Pilati got a bit bogged down. His past as an Italian fabric expert is a major plus for the house, but at times, he lost his grasp working complex surfaces, texture, and volume into wearable clothes. But for evening, something remarkable came walking along the runway: fluttery white chiffon with a high, frilled neck; a cardinal coat, buttoned from throat to floor, and then (with seemingly nothing to do with anything else, but no less brilliant for it), three Directoire plissé goddess gowns, gorgeous enough to tempt a saint. Is it all enough to qualify Stefano Pilati as a prophet in our time? We shall see, but judging by the gathering of the faithful backstage, he's already winning plenty of influential converts.
5 March 2005
Stefano Pilati had two goals in his first catwalk presentation for Yves Saint Laurent menswear. One was to dress a man for every conceivable eventuality in his day (Pilati even mentioned taking tea); the other was to show that men could wear color with the same ease and confidence as they wear black.Colors in often clashing combinations were a signature of YSL's womenswear, but Pilati modernized the idea and made it user-friendly for men by adopting a monochrome tone-on-tone approach and opting for much more muted shades—like the opening suit, in gray flannel with just a hint of purple—than those he found in the archives. The boldest item was a purple mohair coat, cut in a military style, but there was nothing to scare the horses in air force blue, moss green, heather, or butterscotch (in a jacket-over-sweater-over-shirt combo, with caramel velvet cords). A number of three-piece suits suggested that the YSL man's day means business (teatime aside), but Pilati struck a merciful balance with a chunky navy shearling and a belted black leather jacket.Though the label's heritage came through in some of the textures (brushed cotton, Shetland) and a cabled, shoulder-buttoned sweater, Pilati also worked his own vocabulary. He favored a straight shoulder (rather than the slight pagoda effect preferred by Saint Laurent) and a torso-elongating low closure—as in a single-button, double-breasted overcoat, or Le Smoking that closed the show.
29 January 2005
How to follow the mighty histories of Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford at YSL Rive Gauche? Faced with that weighty task, Stefano Pilati, in his first solo runway outing, handled things his own way. He made a clean break from the past by showing in a different, much lighter venue (the Paris Bourse) than Ford and by starting his show with a short, black-and-white polka-dot raincoat with tulip-curved hemline, cinched by a wide, square-buckled black patent leather belt. Ford would never have done that—nor the peplum-jacketed dotted suits with their short skirts, swooping up to a bustle of folds in the back. It's a compliment to Pilati that the mental comparison game had worn out at about Look 6. The guy obviously has a few things of his own to say."It's something between the fifties and the eighties—which is my time—but to do it now, with volumes in a different way," said Pilati, the 38-year-old who assisted Ford at YSL for four years and formerly designed at Prada. He managed to combine an imaginative respect for the house's history, while creating something new (for a generation not necessarily interested in labored references) without slavish replication.The newness showed in the proportions. Those short tulip skirts, gathered into the waist and shown with a rounded shoulder line, moved confidently away from YSL's louche, hip-riding nineties silhouette. For the costume-history spotter, there was a nod to Saint Laurent himself in the broad belts on every daywear look—but that didn't stop them from looking like a great accessory for right now. Ditto the shoes, especially the high suede loafers with big, chic tassels, doused in pure YSL shades of strong red or vibrant green—and potentially a major hit.Pilati's emphasis on daywear also changed the collection's priorities. For night, he dipped into ruffles and flounces, in intense fuchsia, purple, and egg-yolk yellow taffeta, or light waterfall frills of black-and-white chiffon—all with a flavor of flamenco about them. He finished with a few georgette apron dresses that were just the right side of undone. An intriguing first statement for an experienced talent getting a well-deserved chance to speak for himself.
9 October 2004
Stefano Pilati began his first menswear presentation for Yves Saint Laurent by projecting iconic images from the sixties and seventies of the house's namesake and founder—the same pictures that line the building's entry halls. Then, followed a collection that was clearly shaped by this idealized vision of a Frenchman's style—most obviously in the slim silhouette with the strong shoulder and in the bold colors, like cobalt blue, peachy pink, and deep army green (the Italian designer favored more-coordinated combinations than the clashing combos preferred by Saint Laurent). Pilati's respect for the YSL legacy shone through in classics like pea coats, safari tops, and little military jackets, as well as in Liberty-like floral prints from the label's archives. He rendered these more modern by softening and lightening them—all without giving away the undeniable strength of that signature silhouette.
4 July 2004
Tom Ford left the stage with a vividly memorable performance—polished, mature, and perfectly pitched. And that was just the clothes. As for the man, and the way he acquitted himself at a crucial hour, precisely the same description applies. The central player in the most seismic fashion drama of recent memory bowed out smiling, fielding kisses and congratulations with affectionate thanks and a dash of Texan good humor. Tearing an overwrought woman off the shoulder of his red velvet smoking jacket, he said, "Oh, come on. I'm just takin' a break, that's all!"This is a man (an actor by first calling, after all) who knows how to play an emotional scene light. Not that it can't have been nerve-wracking, to say the least, to design the collection that, for better or worse, will go down as his last big statement at Yves Saint Laurent. Which chapter of YSL history to call up for his grand finale? As it turned out, he chose the unexpected: the 1977 Chinese collection that coincided with the launch of Opium. Why? "Instinct," he said. "I felt the pagoda shoulder was right. And it was a period I hadn't mined."So, the pagoda shoulder (albeit far more rounded and up-there than Yves's original squared pads) it was—as well as the opportunity for Ford to show what he can do with the concept of chic color clash. The opening look said it all: a crimson silk Mao jacket, a scarlet satin pencil skirt, and a pair of purple velvet wedges with wicked curved-in heels. Then came that shoulder, also with a slither of lingerie satin skirt, a twinning repeated in a series of color contrasts: turquoise with leaf green, poudre pink and grape, and so on.Ford worked the chinoiserie theme in many keys: subtly, in furs shaved in the pattern of dragon's scales; or full-on, in a tight jet beaded jacket as shiny as a lacquered cabinet. It became both more delicate and sharply sophisticated with the eveningwear. Fragile cheongsams came many ways: fitted sleekly to every curve, in nude silk with an erotic fluff of fur tracing the fastening, in cut-out embroidered lace, or as a full-length cascade of red chiffon flounces.The designer also pared away the famous Saint Laurent smokings to become nipped one-button jackets with a deep luxurious wrap of black satin collar. It was the finale dresses that will likely prove the lasting image of Ford's leave-taking, however.
Vividly patterned, totally sequined slink-gowns, they slithered along the runway trailing the kind of Hollywood glory for which this man will surely be remembered. Until, of course, his next act…
6 March 2004
“It was woman as dandy,” declared Tom Ford of the sinuous twenties and thirties feel he melded into satins and chiffons for YSL’s Spring collection. The designer narrowed and lengthened Saint Laurent’s original boxy, hard-edged lines, opening with louchely draped powder-blue satin suits. The jackets closed with wide hip fastenings over a new-shaped pant that was cut loose to the knee, then caught tight with rows of tiny covered buttons.Ford’s skew on House retro synthesized masculine and feminine elements: a low-belted, gold-buttoned trench was paired with rib-cuffed jog pants, while petaled jersey skirts flew out from under skintight black leather jackets. Reruns of the classic smokings included tuxes, white vests, and mannish dressing gowns, cut floppy and liable to fall open at the breast at any moment. Together with the major frizzed hairdos and sexy high-heeled spectator shoes in leather and canvas, it added up to a new silhouette for the tall, sexually-in-control woman Ford envisions as the spirit of modern YSL.She’s just as powerful-looking in a dress, of course. Karen Elson (who, with her alabaster complexion and ginger hair, is making a comeback as the perfect pre-war muse this season) symbolized that strength, striding out in palest pink bias-cut jersey, pieced in a twenties diamond-pattern at the hip and with handkerchief points flying from shoulder and hem. There followed a line of equally individual gowns in satin and chiffon, worked with curving scalloped layers and plissé skirts and held up by the finest shoulder straps.The visions of pared-down, re-imagined Deco glamour kept coming. There were more sober options in black, with strands of jet beading moving over dark georgette, but they were finally upstaged by a sensational misty blue chiffon gown, delicately suspended from strings of crystal and swinging sparkling fringe, and a white dress smothered in gold coins with delicate pleats fanning out in the skirt. The details in this deluge of gorgeousness were equally unmissable: the new horn-handled pony-skin bags, and the enticingly luxe diamond jewelry. That turned out to come from Boucheron, not YSL—but since they are sister companies in the Gucci Group, it made for a clever piece of borrowing.
11 October 2003
“Color! Fashion! I love it!” said Tom Ford backstage after a show that ended the Fall season in a climax of exuberant, sophisticated, grown-up sexiness. He was looking back, to the 1940s collection that Saint Laurent designed in the ’70s, but also moving things forward, and he hit exactly the right balance with his first outfit: a soft jade silk-velvet jacket, fastened at the side with a satin ribbon, over a flouncy knee-length skirt in a paler green and fishnets finished by Lucite-heeled ankle-strap shoes.Ford shook off the muted, slightly tortured mood of his last collection and embraced the vibrant, daring color clashes Saint Laurent used so often—cranberry and red, brown and pale blue, powder pink and black, and the odd vulgar sparkly heeled emerald shoe to throw everything off a bit. He had fun with the idea of Saint Laurent fur by exaggerating the sleeves on a fox coat, dangling whole tails from the wrists and belting it with a stiff plastic bow. That plastic also came out on evening gowns as see-through breastplates and cuffs glittering with diamanté.But that’s not to say this was a complete change of direction. The slinky flippy skirts he showed under jackets last season were the beginning of a train of thought that here flowered into gorgeous ruffles, exposed black lingerie, fur chubbies and a cascade of long evening gowns. Adding to the mood of happy nostalgia, meanwhile, was a red-lipped Karen Elson—her red hair done in a pageboy—black models with afros and a soundtrack courtesy of Diana Ross and the Supremes.So what made this twenty-first-century Tom and not 1970s Yves? The way Ford knocked the stuffing out of what had become an ossified conservative look with a series of cheeky, knowing twists. There’s nothing ladylike about silk-chiffon dresses that are so sheer you can see straight through to the fishnets beneath. About a blouse neckline that dips below the bra. Or the lace-filled cutouts he planted into the flanks of a pair of black leather pants. (If that puts him in line for criticism, it’s worth remembering that once upon a time Saint Laurent himself came under fire for so-called bad taste.) Simply put, there was enough beauty and controversy in this collection to make it a talking point—and a money spinner—for the next six months. Which means Tom Ford has done it again.
9 March 2003
Tom Ford can take any one of dozens of nuggets of inspiration from the rich mine of Yves Saint Laurent's heritage—with a couple of caveats. First he needs to unearth something that resonates with the here and now, and second he has to forge it into something completely distinct from his work at Gucci. He did both those things for summer by dipping into Saint Laurent's pre–WW II surrealist phase."I think these are surreal times we're living in," said the designer, "but the references are subtle." He's right: his first look—a brown jacket with a silk rose at the bosom, paired with a coffee-colored knee-length chiffon dress—didn’t send any overt historical messages. The line of the shoulder may have been strong, but it didn't scream "'40s" or, for that matter,Dynasty-style '80s. Indeed, the muted colors, like soft lavender, champagne and coffee, and the jacket-and-soft-skirt combination seemed almost within the bounds of ladylike.That is, until you got close enough to see the details. Some, like enamel lips and toenails on shoes, the print of a woman’s behind on the back of a skirt, and a trompe l'oeil wing pattern on an evening cloak, were relatively harmless—Dalí by way of Schiaparelli. Others, however, pushed the envelope a lot further. Ford put purple paint on the models' nipples, and cut jackets and coats like corsets, with a button planted on the tip of each breast. He also designed a black chiffon evening gown with an elongated keyhole surrounded with ruffles; framed in the opening was a small iron pendant, which, upon closer examination, turned out to be a penis.This, then, was a collection that let Ford have it both ways. As well as guaranteeing himself headlines with scandalizing gestures, he slipped out a lot of uncontroversial clothes, including some—a beautiful little black dress and a couple of slim-panted tuxedos—that were real gems.
6 October 2002
Tom Ford is very, very good at being wicked. The designer was in an adult-erotic frame of mind at Yves Saint Laurent, taking potential clichés such as black satin ribbon, taffeta, velvet, chantilly lace and fur and applying them in an offhand way to extravagant, body-emphasizing pieces that often looked as if they might fall off at the slightest pull of a bow. What, after all, could be more provocative than a woman wearing expensive clothes that look as if they were made to be undone by a lover?The silhouette was an elaboration of the one he’d set at Gucci: a generous top and the tightest, rumpled, to-the-knee skirt, skinny pants, or the season’s first genuinely chic knickers done in black velvet. This time he worked the volume into blouses and jackets with dropped shoulders and billowing eighteenth-century sleeves—a device he used most gorgeously in a dark blue velvet coat with huge puffs, lace and mink embellishing the cuff. The show was full of amazingly detailed, sexily cut suits, fabulous coats and sweeping evening gowns delicately inserted with lace.Ford did many riveting things with ribbons and bows. They recurred holding together the seams of a skirt, in a quilting pattern on a suede biker jacket, or as whole skirt made of strips of Chantilly lace. Best of all was a midnight blue velvet suit with a jacket slashed in the back, closed with a row of bows in black satin. It just may have been the most provocative look of the entire season.
10 March 2002
At 8:36 p.m. on Tuesday, January 22, the mirrored doors slid shut on Yves Saint Laurent and his final couture collection. What the 2,000 attendees at the Pompidou Centre (and the several thousand more outside in front of a giant screen) had just witnessed was a career summation without comparison—a tour through 40 years of fashion that distilled the essence of a legend.There was Saint Laurent’s first couture collection after being fired from Dior, opening with a simple pea coat over large white trousers before moving into sharply tailored suits and four-pocket safari jackets. There was the Mondrian dress from 1966, when pop-art faces appeared on straight-cut woolen shifts. And, from 1968, there was the iconic beige cotton jacket in which Veruschka posed on safari, sexily laced up the chest and draped with a silver loop belt. Tonight, Claudia Schiffer pouted out in the same outfit, before eight African girls emerged wearing the fringed, woven, tressed and beaded raffia dresses from that same ’68 show. A slip dress, heavily embroidered with jet, featured conical breasts—a full 25 years before Gaultier hit the headlines with the same idea.There were more incredible thrills to come, like seeing the infamous 1971 “robe au dos nu” (“dress with naked back”) slink down the catwalk. (It was most famously photographed by Jean-Loup Sieff, who notoriously shot YSL nude for a perfume launch the same year.”) Black ’70s model Katoucha glided out in a golden feathered cloak over a leopard-print sheath dress.But the Saint Laurent moment par excellence was Jerry Hall as Marlene Dietrich, vamping in a white ostrich-feather coat over a gleaming white satin gown. As she exited to Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug,” a bevy of black-velvet full-décolleté dresses was ushered in.What is extraordinary chez Saint Laurent is the clarity of his creative vision—the self-assurance of the color palette, the confidence of the cut. Even at their most baroque, like the Russian or Picasso collections, his designs managed to sidestep vulgar excess. Couture will go on. But Monsieur Yves Saint Laurent will be terribly missed.
21 January 2002
Tom Ford was in fine form at Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, sending out his most laid-back, relaxed collection to date.The big news was the arrival—finally—of prints at YSL Rive Gauche, in the form of leopard spots. Ford paired sheer little feline tanks with rustic leather skirts dissected by minute rows of crisscrossed laces; this folksy embellishment also turned up on road-warrior trousers, sexy swimsuits and a fabulous ecru trench. Ring-studded leather jackets, unfinished suede skirts and rough-edge coats looked drop-dead cool with stacked heel sandals and large, half-oval carrier bags.Come spring, Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche evenings will be all about unassuming glamour. Ford's new golden leopard caftan robes are worthy of the queen of the jungle—just the thing for a night of decadent mischief.
9 October 2001
The Parisian couture ended on a traditional note, with Yves Saint Laurent's poised presentation in the gilded salons of the Hotel Inter-Continental.To the tune of a Verdi aria, Saint Laurent sent out impeccably proportioned pencil skirt tailleurs that revealed a masterful sense of color—an incendiary sunset-orange jacket, for example, was paired with a violet satin blouse and a black skirt. Russian-inspired coats followed, trimmed in sable and worn with hearty turtlenecks and massive fur hats. Cocktail hour incorporated every possible variation on the tuxedo: There was a button-front dress, a smoking jacket that morphed into a full tulle skirt, and, naturally, an updated version of the masculine tux immortalized by Helmut Newton in the '70s.Saint Laurent's suggestions for evening, alas, felt a bit cumbersome. Light crepe gowns, jeweled jackets and satin skirts alleviated some of the heaviness, but, for the most part, black velvet dominated. If only the exquisite color combinations that opened the show could have been reworked for the finale.
10 July 2001
Working almost exclusively in black, Tom Ford took confident steps toward defining his vision for Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche.A couple of pink-and-amethyst short dresses trimmed in waffle pleats opened the show; from that moment on, Ford's only concession to color was a deep aubergine tone that surfaced sporadically.The monochromatic scheme forced the audience to focus on the design of the clothes. Saint Laurent's famous gypsies migrated to the new millennium, their fringed skirts and off-the-shoulder peasant dresses intact but updated for urban life. Ford also provided an impressive array of fitted jackets with ruffled lapels, leader-of-the-band coats, sumptuous shearlings and stern military overcoats with epaulettes and thick belts.The precise focus of Ford's collection extended to the accessories: The new YSL Rive Gauche thick-heeled, wide-strap heels, no-nonsense boots and graphic rectangular cases should be flying off the shelves next fall.
13 March 2001
Attending a Saint Laurent couture show is a bit like having a 10-course meal at a three-star Michelin restaurant: Just when you feel like you couldn't possibly indulge in more, along comes another course to tempt and amaze you. At the end of it all, one is left with a feeling of profound, almost reverent satisfaction.A full third of the 100 looks Saint Laurent showed were tailleurs—some with straight trousers, others with strong pencil skirts, but all perfectly cut and paired with unobtrusive tanks and blouses. Cocktail hour provided a lesson inflou: Saint Laurent's belted, off-white, mallard blue and iris crepe dresses delicately skimmed the body, following its every curve and movement.Day turned into evening with ensembles that were colorfully embroidered with naif lemons, mandarins and cherries; satinsmokingsand high-waisted black paillette skirts provided a dramatic counterpoint. Of course, there were also those gorgeous, unmistakably Saint Laurent gowns to choose from: Consider a long drink of navy crepe topped by a puff of white fur, a flamenco-inspired waterfall of cyclamen ruffles, or an organza show-stopper embroidered with shimmering polka dots. And what does the Saint Laurent bride wear? Not trains and tulle (after all, Saint Laurent is the designer who made feminism ultra chic). Instead, she's off to a Marrakesh honeymoon in a gently fitted, perfectly versatile champagne suit.
23 January 2001
A black carpet flanked by shirtless, sharply suited boys and girls led guests through Paris' Musée Rodin to an impressive black tent, dimly illuminated with fluorescent purple lights, where Tom Ford presented the most anticipated collection of the week. It's a perfect moment to update Saint Laurent's legacy: In a season devoted to powerful women, a new strong-shouldered le smoking, for example, is a must-have item. Throw a light, oversize coat over it, and the night is yours. Ford's new YSL woman also commands attention with sexy minidresses equipped with torso-hugging corsets and straps that twist around the body; others are short in front, with a square-cut panel trailing behind. And what about the street? Try the new generously cut, cropped trousers with a crisp white shirt tucked inside and billowed in the back.Ford's strategy was a success because of its directness and simplicity. Very cleverly, Ford reinterpreted only a few essential Saint Laurent favorites—all in black and white—creating a strong, recognizable image for the house, and leaving considerable terrain to explore in the future.
12 October 2000
With his third runway show for Yves Saint Laurent, Alber Elbaz finally hit the target with a controlled collection that proved a strong modern take on the house's timeless chic. Elbaz elongated and chiseled the classic proportions of the trademark boxy jackets and pencil skirts, and showed them with black glove-leather shirts with matching narrow ties--a cool, modern spin for the classic YSL suit. With satin revers on an overscale man's Crombie coat, he also gave a contemporary twist to "le Smoking."Moving away from the house's enduring '40s references, Elbaz's models wore their hair in severe French twists and stalked the runway in vicious stiletto-heeled shoes. Tabard coats and dresses, worn over skinny rib knits, and a trio of priestly black jersey robes, allowed Elbaz to express his austere side.Leavinggrand soirstatements to the master himself and the haute couture collection he continues to design, Elbaz sent out only short, after-dark looks for his finale. Classic metallic lace looked chic again, in long-sleeved midi dresses styled with hip-slung crocodile belts and wrinkled '70s cavalier boots. Great-looking tarnished brass lamé suits with black chiffon blouses, body-skimming cocktail dresses in black slipper-satin, and entrance-making flapper dresses—solid with brilliant silver bugle beads—were followed by a final stylish take on a YSL classic—the sheer black chiffon blouse with a skirt made entirely of ostrich feathers.
27 February 2000
"Yves Saint Laurent is not about the past and it's not about the future. It is eminently contemporary," said Pierre Bergé before the show began. Truer words could not have been spoken. Alber Elbaz created a collection that perfectly captures the fashion moment "designed for a woman who desires traditions with a twist, who thinks big and lives fast." Classic Saint Laurent favorites looked better than ever--tuxedo suits with chiffon shirts, evening dresses brimming with flou français and sexy tops with oversized cowl necks. But there were also sharp new pieces, like a series of semitransparent green, fuchsia, blue and plum suits; hard-edged tan leather dresses; plastic paillette gowns; python overcoats and Amazon-inspired silk shirts with leaf motifs. Clearly, Saint Laurent's strong, gutsy woman is still very much in vogue—and, thankfully, it looks like we'll be seeing plenty of her in the future.
3 October 1999