Ludovic de Saint Sernin is dressing everybody.
Or, perhaps more accurately, the 31-year-old Parisian designer now on everybody’s lips and hips is dressing any body.
His clothes occupy a space that could teach the rest of fashion a thing or two about inclusive design — and the painstakingly perfected omni-gender creations aren’t the stuff of “genderless” designs past, where the chief differentiator was often being oversized and shapeless enough to work on whoever wore it. No. They’re form-accentuating, sexy and contributing to the naked dressing trend that emerged as a counterpoint to the sweats season that lockdown ushered in.
“I love dressing the body, but also undressing the body,” de Saint Sernin says during a video interview from his studio in Paris. It’s a sentiment most everyone can relate to but many in fashion have been too demure to embrace.
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“We really stand for this idea of garments are garments and then the wearer defines the clothes,” he says, adding that the brand’s aim is to let people “embrace their feminine side whether they’re a guy or a boy, and be comfortable with clothes that are close to their body yet make them feel beautiful and comfortable.”
A hover over certain product images on the Ludovic de Saint Sernin site reveals the look on a male form and then on a female form, replicating the ease with which the design could work for any wearer who wants it. When it comes to the brand’s signature eyelet swimwear bottoms, while the styles aren’t labeled for any one gender or the other, they are created to fit varying anatomy.
More than anything, Ludovic de Saint Sernin is a human brand — both for whom it thinks about when designing and for how the designer himself wants those people to feel. And that feeling is one de Saint Sernin, who studied women’s wear at École Duperré Paris and did stints at Dior and Balmain, wasn’t getting from traditional fashion.
“I remember looking at fashion and thinking about fashion as a woman’s thing, for women to dress up and be beautiful and feel beautiful and I was always creating for somebody else,” he says of his start in women’s wear. “Then I realize, ‘oh my god, it’s actually my biggest gay dream to just be able to wear an Hervé Léger dress or to wear an Alaïa dress or to do all these beautiful, beautiful clothes that are body conscious for women but create a version of that for guys.’”
At its start with a debut spring collection in 2018, the LdSS brand, de Saint Sernin says, was “initially quite queer, gay, sex positive, and that’s amazing, it’s my core fan base, but I also knew that it had to grow — but I didn’t want to let them down either.”
Getting inclusive design right extends far beyond being politically correct or au courant or woke or whatever the latest go-to descriptor is. To de Saint Sernin, it’s about making people feel beautiful in whatever they want to wear. And it’s about bolstering body positivity, too.
The designer, who amidst the pandemic somewhat accidentally became his label’s muse when locked-down models were harder to come by, wasn’t always comfortable in the body followers now see in the skin-baring swim briefs on the brand’s Instagram page, which doubles as de Saint Sernin’s personal page, too.
“I think wearing boy clothes most of my life, like regular guy clothes, I personally have a body where I have a silhouette — so I have kind of like a tiny waist and then hips, which I was always embarrassed about and which would never look good in regular boys’ clothes,” he says. “And I thought to myself, if I’m feeling this way, maybe other people are feeling this way. I would never know if I should go to the women’s section or the men’s section and I just thought, you know what, I’m just going to create something that represents me and maybe that will speak to other people.”
It’s certainly speaking to the community swelling around de Saint Sernin, which the designer has discovered through DMs of gratitude he’s received for striking a “balance between masculine and feminine and embracing your masculine side, but also your feminine side in a way that is queer and beautiful but also elevated and elegant, and that is really trying to just be the authentic version — not an exaggeration — but the authentic version of yourself.
“I didn’t realize that would resonate with so many people, whoever they are, whatever they present as, and that was amazing because it opened such a big, big door for people to have that freedom,” de Saint Sernin says.
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For his spring 2022 collection, Désir, the designer’s first showing during women’s fashion week, de Saint Sernin presented as much men’s wear as women’s wear, and on models of various genders. What the collection drives home is that a crystal bustier or Léger-like bandage top is for anyone who wants it. Some understand what he’s doing and others, less so.
“I think my biggest mission was kind of to spell it out for them. The way I was doing it, maybe only a very niche or small portion of people could understand what we were doing and I think us really just going bold and just going for a collection that’s so 100 percent us but also show it on men and women equally [was important],” the designer says. “But I think it’s OK to understand that not everything is so accessible and sometimes you just have to make it more obvious for people to really get it. And I think people are now also giving me the credit for some of these things and it’s amazing and it’s also what we worked for. So, it’s just great to have this recognition from not just a niche part of the industry and everyone, but to really have a bigger impact.”
Désir, so named for its inspiration from French painter Jean Claracq’s piece depicting a character from a medieval tale named Désir, who was burning of desire (there’s a forthcoming capsule collection of artisanal pieces plus merch around the collaboration between the designer and the artist) was a work of perfected technique as much as impact.
“A good half of the collection is really couture,” de Saint Sernin says.
For one, the Swarovski crystal unraveling dress — seen pre-runway on model Anok Yai at a Met Gala after party — was crafted to perfection before the methodically done unravelling.
“Originally, it was solid crystal and we usually do naked dresses so it was the first time it was fully solid, no transparency, no openings or whatever and we finished it and we put it on the mannequin and we were like, ‘ugh, it’s too perfect,’” the self-professed perfectionist says. “And we were like, you know what, this season is about embracing your imperfections as well and just finding beauty in imperfection and after the head of crystals at LdSS was done with the dress, I took the dress and I started destroying it carefully, methodically but I started destroying it and it became unique, beautiful.”
Braided and knotted leatherwork LdSS presented for the first time with Désir was also done entirely on mannequins, no sewing, all couture, de Saint Sernin says. “The intention was to mix those [couture pieces] with more wearable sellers like the go-to shirt and the boxer pants and all these very easy, fluid pieces,” he says.
While some brands leave the storytelling to marketing (a miss with today’s everything-savvy consumer) de Saint Sernin hand-sews the story into the core of its fabric.
“When I started the brand, the most important thing was to be able to tell my story through the collections, so a lot of them are very autobiographical because I always feel I relate to people’s stories more than a story that’s invented,” he says. “I kind of look at collections as, the same way a musician or an artist is going to pour their feelings into an album, I’m kind of going to do the same thing in a collection.”
The best responses to de Saint Sernin’s story are those of fans saying, “I’ve never felt more beautiful,” the designer recounts. Detractors, however few and however far from de Saint Sernin’s field of interest, are opting for vomit emojis.
“I don’t like to entertain negative energy but it’s for sure something where people would be like, ‘oh my god this boy is wearing a cropped top, he’s wearing girl clothes and s–t like this,’ and it’s like I cannot believe people would still say things like this today,” he says.
The brand’s @ludovicdesaintserninX Instagram account (think photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s XYZ Portfolios or Madonna’s daring “Sex” book with an X on the cover), a photographic story of sensuality and sexuality and part of de Saint Sernin’s commitment to celebrating the queer community, was recently removed by the platform because, according to the designer, “I know it’s technically a bit difficult to express body positivity and sex positivity on the platform sometimes, especially for queer artists. But that’s why I’m here, is to give visibility. And I don’t want to push it in everybody’s face. I’m just here to show what I do and hopefully by showing it more and more we can make people’s minds evolve and understand and see that it’s there and they just have to accept it — they don’t even have to like it.”
Post-Désir, interest has ramped up for the brand, which has emerged on the other side of the pandemic in much better shape than most. “After the show we had a huge amount of new following and people reaching out, a lot of girls, a lot of new retailers, shops asking to carry the brand,” de Saint Sernin says.
So what’s in the pipeline for LdSS? More women’s wear for the brand and perhaps a creative director role for the designer, who has already started fielding inquiries.
“What’s next for the brand is to really solidify our view on women’s wear. It’s a new territory for us and I really am so proud to be able to dress all these beautiful women that I love and to expand that, too. So I think we’ll definitely be showing again during women’s next season, which is super exciting for us because I don’t want it to be a one night stand,” de Saint Sernin says. “We’re going to keep pushing that vision and continue to give a platform and visibility for the people who are part of our community and celebrate them. And I think, hopefully, it will be loud enough that maybe I get hired somewhere to do something.
“My biggest mission is to continue LdSS and grow, but I would love to see what I could do somewhere else.”
As would many fans and fashion people.
A recent sentiment from actress, writer and producer Issa Rae, in a nod to her own current success, speaks well to this de Saint Sernin moment: “It’s feeling like a ‘me’ season right now. I feel so bad for anybody who doesn’t f–k with me. Mute me, block me, whatever you need to do because it’s a ‘me’ season right now, it’s my time.”
Certainly, it’s a “me season” for de Saint Sernin.
EDITOR’S NOTE: WWD has updated this story to state that de Saint Sernin is dressing for any gender, rather than any body.