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—public and professionals—looked on, held in the awestruck moment. There were legs for miles; 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, counter-intuitively displayed in splendour on a
platform wide and visible enough to cheer a whole city. The set, built
out below the Trocadero, was vast; the ambition of it an inescapable
statement. Yves Saint Laurent has always symbolised something more about
Paris than simpy being a fashion brand: It stands for chic, for
eroticism, for a liberal code—book of dressing which was written by one
young designer and his business partner, Pierre Bergé—French national
heroes. For Vacarello, and for everyone watching, the emotional weight
of this show was further freighted by the recent passing, earlier this
month, of Bergé.
In circumstances which must
have been hugely daunting, Vacarello passed the test with singular focus
and conviction. Without being too obediently or heavily referential,
his collection read as a seamless journey which began with the hippy
souvenirs of Marrachech 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 sequin dresses, bravura ostrich feathers, all of
it paired with the tiniest of shorts and skirts, and an endless march of
sensational boots.
The results of Vacarello’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 mass worldwide
audience, almost certainly too young to know or care about the history,
this was a rare shot 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 to a new
generation.
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