Saint Laurent Spring/Summer 2018 Ready-To-Wear Collection...Fashionweekly...On Fow24news.com

You could see the Saint Laurent collection as a trek between the places Yves Saint Laurent spent his life: from the Jemaa el-Fnaa to the Eiffel Tower, and all the memories in between. The Parisian monument served as the backdrop for the spring/summer 2018 show, Anthony Vaccarello’s first since the death of Pierre Bergé on September 8......
“You’re not Yves Saint Laurent. Don’t try to be Yves Saint Laurent,” Bergé told him over lunch before his debut show a year ago. Vaccarello took his advice. He lost himself in the archives and emerged with his own teenage dream of the designer’s legacy: skimpier, raunchier, fiercer and fun - the eternal Eighties music video that plays in Vaccarello’s supermodel-centric head. “I really wanted to pay homage to him,” he said of Bergé after this evening’s show, “to Yves Saint Laurent, to the house. Even if it’s a cliché, I want to push the cliché so far it’s beautiful.” Nothing could better sum up Vaccarello’s approach to Saint Laurent.

For all his soft-spoken coyness, this young designer has an astute sense for the fabulous. He spent his summer travelling between decadent Mediterranean hotels and the glamour of Los Angeles, top model BFFs in tow, and lived out his own version of the life Saint Laurent and Bergé shared in their many homes from Marrakech to Paris. This collection embellished on all those memories, from the casual Arabesque flouncy numbers and desert shorts that opened the show, to the virginal venise lace tops of Italian and French countryside, and the sculptural haute-couture shapes that eventually claimed the runway. “I really wanted to work with my team and tell a story of Paris and Yves Saint Laurent. There is nothing deeper than that to it,” Vaccarello admitted. “It’s enjoying making clothes with people, who can do amazing stuff.”

It was, of course, in the evening looks that his tribute reached its peak. Crazy and wildly top-heavy on his almost exclusively mini-mini-skirt silhouette, his voluminous fabric and feather constructions had all the mad love Bergé spoke about when he famously declared his “l’amour fou” to Yves Saint Laurent. This was always the House of Love, and while Vaccarello isn’t its founder and doesn’t try to be, that feeling is forever. With the Eiffel Tower’s sparkly lights illuminating the Paris evening sky, he and his smoke machines treated show-goers – and the public, watching from the other side of the Fontaine du Trocadero – to 91 looks in two shows in one, celebrating his own fandom of the house and its illustrious friends. Vaccarello’s massive collection – although still about thirty looks shy of Gucci standards – found its common denominator two-thirds through.

Look 67, worn by Natasha V, perfectly illustrated his meeting between a casual foundation and a sudden over-the-top element: an unassuming black military jacket worn over a plunging black top, with black leather short-shorts, steel-toe stilettos, and gigantic black marabou feather sleeves. There was something wonderful about witnessing Vaccarello giving in to grand fashion, embracing every little flamboyant boy’s dream of what it must be like to be one of the great old designers, daubing things in precious feathers, sculpting costly silks around a woman’s body, and dressing her in the power boots of his wildest and most mischievous imagination. Not to mention the miniskirts, which Vaccarello loves and wishes would be “a worldwide thing". As for the Saint Laurent girl, he said, “I want her to have fun. She’s not depressed. She has a fun life.” And while no one can speak for Yves and Pierre, surely they’d agree with that sentiment.