Saint Laurent is finally back on the official Paris Fashion Week schedule — and hallelujah. Its runway shows at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, which sparkles after dusk, are about as French as French fashion can get, and have a spine-tingling effect.
Anthony Vaccarello’s narrow, elongated silhouettes for spring — as emphatic as the Iron Lady — held up to the gobsmacking setting, his pin-thin models filing in precise rows around a wall of scaffolding that blinked with lights and ultimately erupted with falling water.
Frosty glamour is perhaps the best way to describe Vaccarello’s severe, polished brand of chic, this season hinged on mannish, square-shouldered jackets, skimpy disco catsuits and evening gowns and dresses with the shrugged-on ease of a polo shirt.
Big sunglasses, leather gloves and major gold jewelry heightened the 1980s allure and winked to Paloma Picasso, whose theatrical sense of dress — a turban and big gemstones here, an austere bustier gown there — was said to have inspired house founder Yves Saint Laurent and nudged his creativity out of bourgeois codes.
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Vaccarello described Picasso’s beauty as “dissonant — the overtly red mouth, the sex appeal, a look that’s pure Spanish baroque.…I was always struck by this photograph of her and him, taken at a preview, possibly at the opera, where she tucked the evening’s program in the waistband of her pants. With one gesture, all is said. I think we need that powerful and uncompromising image of a woman, especially nowadays. It is a symbol of what is now called empowerment.”
Of course, we’re in an age of luxury expansion, so Vaccarello shoved gleaming leather wallets and clutch bags into his spring trousers — tight, stiff and gently flaring over platform stiletto slingbacks.
Each exit was buffed to a high gloss, from the draped and knotted evening columns to the soigné tuxedo dresses one associates with Catherine Deneuve, who scrambled into the venue past the call time.
The show climaxed with austere black gowns with bare, sparkling bodices — and a spray of water over the crowd as the wind had picked up and disturbed the waterfall. The fashion crowd dashed for the exits, damp but elated.
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