IHT Suzy Menkes says
YSL soars high with a virtual show; Louis Vuitton and Jean Paul Gaultier move to the music
By Suzy Menkes
Thursday, January 17, 2008
PARIS: The figure floating through the sky in a blizzard of rose petals was not so much a remake of David Bowie's "The Man Who Fell to Earth." It was Stefano Pilati's imagination soaring.
The
Yves Saint Laurent designer, who opened the French menswear season, broke the mold of men's catwalk shows. And after five days of Milan runway presentations, it made a welcome change.
"It was about time someone did something new," said Marc Newson, the inventive product designer who was at Pilati's dinner, along with the actress Catherine Deneuve and Fran�ois-Henri Pinault, chief executive of the PPR group, which includes YSL.
It was not the first time a designer has done virtual show. But Pilati offered an artistic experience in tune with the Facebook generation. Tapping two London video artists from the Colonel Blimp company and using the actor Simon Woods rather than a model, the video had a sense of energy and transmitted the romantic emotion that is at the heart of Pilati's aesthetic. Filmed in slow motion, every detail was visible from a cuff button to a felted print on a shirt front or even a printed scarf unfurling from the sky.
True to the Bowie reference, the clothes, viewed afterward in the adjacent showroom, had a faint 1970s beat and had the slender jacket and wider pants that are a Pilati trademark. But the real story was in color and texture: tie-dye velvet jackets in rich marigold and dragonfly blue, which was the preferred color in the collection, for Pilati himself and for the autumn/winter season. Even shoes were in colored suedes, giving a dandy, but never retro, effect to a fine and intelligently presented collection.
The essential problem for menswear designers is how to project an image in a meaningful way when a show ultimately means variations on shirts and pants.
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor at the International Herald Tribune.