Saint Laurent F/W 13.14 Paris

[TianCouture]

Actually, this is the way tfs spot works. At least in the Designers and Collections threads

I guess you missed the word "sarcastic" in my post. It had seemed, and still does, that people were insisting they saw the collection IRL to strengthen their arguments. I don't need you to define what "Designers and Collections" is about...

 

[tricotineacetat]

Here is a great piece, written by Lisa Armstrong, the fashion editor for the Daily Telegraph, on the collection:

Paris Fashion Week: Saint Laurent autumn/winter 2013

Saint Laurent was all about intensely adult sexiness, but this collection featured cutesy baby doll chiffon dresses with Peter Pan collars, writes Lisa Armstrong.

BY LISA ARMSTRONG | 05 MARCH 2013


After so much tricksiness on the catwalks this season, there's undoubtedly virtue in presenting beautifully cut checked, flared crombie coats with an oversized skew that looked elegant rather than Charlie Chaplinesque, or classic masculine jackets, some with cutaway, frock-coat fronts.

The thing is, I'm not sure Hedi Slimane has complete confidence in the understated power of his tailoring to carry him through.
Why else pepper it with teeny baby doll chiffon dresses that had Peter Pan collars and neck ribbons, fishnets, and then toss a Nirvana plaid shirt underneath, or work a baggy mohair cardigan or duffle into the mix? It's not that it didn't look cute. Slimane can style and he can certainly cut a jacket any grown up in their right mind would want to invest in. He also has the best taste in music - this mix, recorded on the road in Australia and Asia came courtesy of Thee Oh Sees.

So we get it. Slimane is remaking Saint Laurent. It's young. It's sexy. It's très rock and roll. A gazillion girls who love Urban Outfitters' signature homage to Seattle Grunge will adore this luxed-up version. Those sparkly fishnets? Sold. Teeny tight leather dresses with bodices almost entirely composed of buckles and straps? Bring 'em on. And who doesn't love a studded biker boot? No bags by the way.

Here, however, comes the but. Saint Laurent was all about deviant, intensely adult, sexiness. Is Slimane's teen spirit an adequate reboot? And although I don't want to start on that name change again, why go to all the trouble to rebrand and then unfurl two huge banners with the YSL Cassandre outside the Grand Palais?

Backstage, Slimane was congratulated by Jamie Hince and Pixie Geldof, to whom this collection could have been dedicated. While it was good to see Slimane looking more relaxed than last season, the journalist in me wanted to ask Catherine Deneuve, who was also there, alongside a scarlet lipped and vampily dressed Jessica Chastain, what she would be wearing from this show. It was not to be. The house is making progress in its public relations, but we're not yet at the truth and reconciliation stage where we can actually ask questions.

In any case, in some ways, enquiries in this vein are pointless. In the showroom, there are bound to be many more of those fabulous jackets that so many of us would like to get our hands on, including the deconstructed beaded cardigan-jacket, with black trim. However since the press aren't invited to see those, I must base my review on the show which was... puzzling, particularly in a season where menswear is so dominant. You'd imagine a designer who trained in it would be transcendent.

If Slimane went grunge because he was worried a bunch of menswear clothes wouldn't be enough on their own on a major Paris catwalk, he has a point. But he needs to have more faith in the enduring allure of beautifully engineered pieces - and riff on them some more next season. Neither he - nor Saint Laurent - requires the styling tics of a 20-year-old teenage music revolution.

 

[Vincent]

Hedi at the end of the show

historyofmyworld.tumblr

 

[mikeijames]

nothing like a controversy to bring me back to these forums, but i think all of the posters around here doth protest too much. while i did enjoy some of stefano's designs (although always mourning the loss of tom ford), let's not pretend that ysl did not coast along on the sale of "it" bags, "it" shoes, and cosmetics. while some of his earlier collections may have found a promising audience, he did not keep them over the years.

also, let's not pretend that this business model has not worked for other brands. balmain went from oscar de la renta designing their couture line to decarnin sending out distressed jeans. pucci went from selling patterned puffer jackets to low cut minidresses. even beloved givenchy which once had mcqueen at the helm now subsists on sweatshirts and tees. to pretend there's not a market for super high end street wear displays an overarching misunderstanding of the fashion business in total. what slimane has sought to do with this collection circles around building a fresh cachet for the brand. he did it at dior homme, a brand so successful on his look that women bought in on it. does anyone honestly believe that while he reigned at dior homme that many down market brands did not sell skinny black jeans or itsy bitsy blazers to top them off with?

does this stuff carry the stature of the old saint laurent? of course not, but guess what? lots of other brands have filled that vacuum including tom ford himself. slimane and his uppers at ppr have recognized a piece of the market that has high returns and room for one more. once he gets his footing and the brand starts cashing in on their celebrity clientel, the bags, the shoes, and the fragrance will sell to the same girls who bought them before. and because the "establishment" fashion press has stirred up such a dust storm, he's given the label an air of controversy that slimane never did manage. ask any of those flighty suburbanites tiptoeing around in tribtoos or city girls with muses on their arms and they probably could not identify a single piece that pilati sent down the runway. and, unlike pilati, hedi has a strong circle of fashion friends -- not to mention the money that ppr commands in the luxury marketplace -- that will make sure this stuff rises to the top in the same way that givenchy, balmain, and so many others have.

remember he left the fashion world behind, not the other way around.

 

[fashionista-ta]

Here is a great piece, written by Lisa Armstrong, the fashion editor for the Daily Telegraph, on the collection:

thought-provoking ... what would a secure hedi slimane be sending down the runway? & how would he answer the questions he'd be taking?

it's hard to deny they're intentionally stirring up a sh!tstorm ... but i guess i'm old school ... i just don't believe a sh!tstorm is the cornerstone of anything great.

 

[Chanelcouture09]

nothing like a controversy to bring me back to these forums, but i think all of the posters around here doth protest too much. while i did enjoy some of stefano's designs (although always mourning the loss of tom ford), let's not pretend that ysl did not coast along on the sale of "it" bags, "it" shoes, and cosmetics. while some of his earlier collections may have found a promising audience, he did not keep them over the years.

The cosmetics side of the company is owned separately from PPR/Gucci Group, it's owned by L'Oreal.

 

[gossiping]

i didn't like the last one and i don't like this either. just too..weird for me.

 

[Scott]

i think the argument about the tailoring is very well pointed. i think with that what it basically shows us is how limited hedi really is when it comes to range. i'm not going to engage in some immature,defensive back and forth with anybody so i will only say this.....the collection looks awfully half-hearted and lazy. i'm not stuck in some regressed ideals about YSL in that sentiment but i do miss the level of inspiration this house used to conjure. this doesn't look inspired nor does it have soul. i think being based in LA and hanging round overrated celebs has definitely influenced a certain vacuousness in his direction here. it's all hype no substance.

 

[Deleted member 116819]

LOL The Style.com video is pretty bad. He only asked singers and a blogger, not a single editor or fashion critic...obvious....
And Betty loved it (only for the cameras I guess )

 

[fashionista-ta]

^ since celebrity guests are apparently paid ... and since they are usually actresses ... i'm not sure their expressions & comments can be taken seriously. does anyone know if certain bloggers are also paid? i mean, i know they're paid like marc jacobs pays his models, but i mean cash

 

[mikeijames]

The cosmetics side of the company is owned separately from PPR/Gucci Group, it's owned by L'Oreal.

very true....forgot about that even so, ready to wear only represents 19% of saint laurent's revenue according to ppr's website.

 

[lowfive1715]

In the end, the numbers will start to reflect the true damage. The supposed "high sales" are from the denim and that's where it stops. If PPR is hoping for a turnaround then Hedi better come up with an "It" bag. Even Pilati was able to accomplish that with lackluster sales in RTW. Only Ford was able to produce profits in RTW for YSL. Maybe he understood the "new" YSL woman better, which brings up some many questions about his disastrous women's collections. Just food for thought.

 

[Mathewthew]

very true....forgot about that even so, ready to wear only represents 19% of saint laurent's revenue according to ppr's website.

So it's really the bags and the shoes that make the profits.
The bags should be fine, They looks amazing...I love the Cabas & Duffles,I wouldn't mind they have new bags like muse or downtown, but doubt they gonna make it.....
Im really excited to see how's the revenue goes of the sales of this S/S collection goes.

 

[birdofparadise]

We have to remember Saint Laurent's enduring odes to 'bad taste', whether through his sensational Parisian collaborationists in '71, his Saharienne based on the military apparel of the Deutsches Afrikakorps trying to make inroads during WW2 or even his insistence on using black models not only on the runways and in print ads but as his house models. This rebelliousness, this freedom is in the house's DNA. I did not like the clothes but I thought the spirit was correct and showed how far we perhaps have to go: could a woman walk around in clothes like that and not be thought of as any number of derogatory things, anything but free, anything but someone making her own decisions? Would we say she isn't 'special', that she's worth less than a box of Saint Laurent labels? It's all going a bit too far, especially when we consider that Saint Laurent's sense of good taste was alcohol and ****** fueled, seasoned with severe depression.

 

[disco54]

Birds of Paradise, You cannot compare collection 40 from 1971 with the trash Hedi put out on his second collection. For starters, YSL revived and reinvented the early 40s look which was taboo, because of its association with WW II which was not a good time for France, mind you WW II ended 26 years earlier and nobody dared to visit that era before Yves.
The shock here is not for the new and revolutionary, which was the case with Yves, but for the cheapness and vapidness of the collection. Yves designed for a woman in mind, not a 14 or 15 year old. Many high street brands have been doing grunge capsule collections for many seasons now, in fact very similar clothing can be bought at Forever 21 as I am typing this. Those who defend this by saying 'oh the devil is in the details' still looks like trash in the details or there lack of. I have been a YSL customer for more than 25 years and have quite a few of my mother's YSL pieces from the early mid 70s and I will cherish them even more. If Hedi wants to do his own tween luxe version of Hot Topic, then by all means, LA fashion week would be a perfect venue ( he designs there anyways). If your going to be at the helm of an extremely storied French fashion house, come with some class,ingenuity and respect.

 

[Izreal]

If PPR is hoping for a turnaround then Hedi better come up with an "It" bag.

looks like they've already done so:

ysl.com

rdujour.com

purseblog.com

 

[GIVENCHYlover]

NOOOOoooooooo

judgementalanna.tumblr

 

[birdofparadise]

Birds of Paradise, You cannot compare collection 40 from 1971 with the trash Hedi put out on his second collection.

Ay, there's the rub.

From the Berge Foundation's 2010 monograph: People instantly realized they were being projected back to the 1940s. The critics slammed the collection. "Nauseating," said the Daily Telegraph, and the Guardian called it "a tour de force of bad taste." "A cold shower," clamed Paris-Jour; "women at their worst," concluded the Daily Sketch. But it was Eugenia Sheppard who wrote the most famous putdown of all: "The Ugliest Show in Town". Pierre-Yves Guillen, meanwhile, was the most vitrolic. "What arrogance to think that, like sheep penned in a concentration camp, we would applaud when we saw good taste sent to the slaughter, elegance consigned to a mass grave, glamour dispatched to the ovens".

Mind you, all this Fuss about a style of clothing already in existence, saved and forgotten, sold off and discarded, picked through and revived, worn by young women who had no idea or did and couldn't care less. Why is that not Luxury?

Why aren't we asking bigger questions about who gets to decide on what should and should not be shown? We are all aware of Mr. Slimane's design skills, it's impact cannot be erased. I think, despite how I personally feel about his latest efforts, that he deserves the benefit of the doubt, if such a thing exists. He went the more typical luxury route for the house when he helmed its menswear the first time around; youtube shows gold leathers, redheads, bikini briefs, sleeveless trenches und so weiter.

I would say this is more about irony, in celebrating and reviving a style that was at its essence anti-fashion. Didn't Courtney Love burn those Perry Ellis grunge pieces that Marc Jacobs sent her? Mr. Slimane essentially wants to dress the very people he never could or never will, those who are unaffected, immune to the fashion circus.

 

[iluvjeisa]

We have to remember Saint Laurent's enduring odes to 'bad taste', whether through his sensational Parisian collaborationists in '71, his Saharienne based on the military apparel of the Deutsches Afrikakorps trying to make inroads during WW2 or even his insistence on using black models not only on the runways and in print ads but as his house models. This rebelliousness, this freedom is in the house's DNA. I did not like the clothes but I thought the spirit was correct and showed how far we perhaps have to go: could a woman walk around in clothes like that and not be thought of as any number of derogatory things, anything but free, anything but someone making her own decisions? Would we say she isn't 'special', that she's worth less than a box of Saint Laurent labels? It's all going a bit too far, especially when we consider that Saint Laurent's sense of good taste was alcohol and ****** fueled, seasoned with severe depression.

First of all - what the good taste is fuelled by really does not matter - would you say van Gogh's work was somehow worse because he had a mood disorder? It's the outcome that matters. And, if anything, the mood swings tend to put a bit of soul into the work.

And then, Cathy Horyn did not say the woman wasn't worth more than the YSL labels, she said the clothes of SL had less design value than the YSL labels. And she is exactly right. Of course, there are a lot of collections out there you can say that about because the YSL logo is fantastic.

Finally, what came down that runway did not induce the shock of the new in all the people who are responding negatively to it. You can be sure of that. And you can be sure that ten years from now people will not look at that collection and see how novel it was.

 

[disco54]

I smell shills