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Yves Saint Laurent’s Ruthless Refinement

The big question everyone was asking as they walked into the latest Yves Saint Laurent runway in Paris on Monday, Oct. 4, was whether - in a season where scores of catwalks had featured homages to the French master - the house’s current creative director Stefano Pilati would make the YSL collection about his own ideas. The answer was in the mouth-watering affirmative in a pretty triumphant show, which won him tumultuous applause, and arguably Pilati’s finest collection for this legendary brand.

The YSL retrospective this spring in Paris’ Petit Palais – arguably the best ever staged for any designer, anywhere – has had a profound influence in this current season. But where imitators and more reputable designers spun versions of Saint Laurent by aping his famed color codes of mixing crimson, violet and gold, or riffing on his mannish tailoring and tuxedos, Pilati took the YSL DNA to an entirely higher level.

His tailoring throughout this show, staged in a Rothschild family mansion in a posh Paris quarter, was pretty phenomenal. Take his opening look, a fiendishly well-cut white trench coat whose huge lapels and splendid cut gave it an elegant swagger.

During his reign at YSL, Pilati has always tried to deconstruct the house’s visual DNA in order to reinvent it. He did so here with some enchanting tuxedo-meets-screen goddess column dresses that were the chicest single looks of the season so far. Rifling through the house’s canon, Pilati also sent out refined though tough cocktail dresses and skirts with Spanish flamenco ruffles, and tops with a vertical mini column of stiff fabric and sturdy neck collar that were all very posh fetishistic.

His use of bows - twisted at the back of halter necks, dipping off tangerine silk blouses or finishing a coat’s neckline in black chiffon – was exemplary.

“Sexiness and exoticism,” smiled Pilati in the backstage in between posing for photos with Claudia Schiffer and Salma Hayek, wife of Francois Henri Pinault, whose Gucci Group owns YSL.

However, it was ironic on exiting such a powerful show to recall that Paris has been flooded by rumors that Pilati’s position is under threat, and that headhunters have been actively interviewing potential replacements, which says something for the nervousness of the times. For, in effect, Pilati just underwent a very public test of his talent, which he passed with flying colors.

In a season where roughly one out of three designers in New York and in Europe made some reference to YSL, Pilati’s was unquestionably the best interpretation. It’s a strange way to fight for your job, but these are strange, and straightening, times in fashion.

		* Thom Browne Spring 2014 * Delpozo Spring 2014