SPRING SUMMER 2020 READY-TO-WEAR Saint Laurent

SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEARSaint Laurent
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.
Vogue Magazine

PARIS,SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

by SARAH MOWER