Paris Autumn/Winter '08

Yves Saint Laurent, Autumn/Winter 2008 (scroll down to read more)
Yves Saint Laurent
For Wallpaper* the Yves Saint Laurent show ticked all the right boxes. The show opened with a footman's jacket made of raw cut double-faced felted wool with overscale couture-like button holes running up either side on a model with black lips and a pudding bowl haircut covering the slithery sunglasses. It, like everything that followed, was really modern, heard that before, yes, but Stefano Pilati seems to have found the knack of how to take iconic elements of YSL's long and illustrious career, mix them up with elements from sport, music and art, and come up with something totally new. The minimal use of any kind of closure, the colour palette and the specially developed fabrics were the key. Felted wool and cashmere, micro Donegal tweeds that appeared grey but were actually peppered with colour, sculptural silks with loads of weft and specially developed flocking that gave an intense depth to colour like a piece from Anish Kapoor, were often combined on the same garment accentuating the cut and shape. They also allowed Pilati to create architectural shape that either hung from a strong Saint Laurent shoulder or came away from the wrist, hip or thigh in the strongest pant of the season, the high-waisted Zouave, another classic YSL given new life. It does not get much better than this.