Paris Fashion Week: menswear

Yves Saint Laurent, Spring/Summer '09 (scroll down to read the review)
Yves Saint Laurent
At Yves Saint Laurent, Stefano Pilati considered gender and masculinity, presenting a series of seven short films, which explored the reality that exists between the masculine and the feminine.

In the collection, fabrics more conventionally used in women’s clothing such as silk crepe, satin, mousseline, gazar and velvet were proposed for men.

The blazers and the new pleated pants were still fully tailored yet had a softness thanks to the choice of cloth. Details such as supple leather belts as soft as ribbon, pin brooches used to close blazers, satin shoes and sequins both real and printed added a further twist into the mix.

Saint Laurent himself was a pioneer of gender bending, he is credited with putting women in pants, giving them the blazer, the tuxedo etc. Pilati however, is not raiding the house archives for ideas, his collections may be full of references, but his knack is to take things forward or as he puts it 'to dig into the contemporary'.