GAME OF THRONES: THE FASHION EDITION

Alber Elbaz by Irving Penn

What is Lanvin be without Alber Elbaz? The designer’s peremptory and abrupt, and now acrimonious exit from Lanvin last November capped a year of dramatic changes in the world of fashion. 

Designer musical chairs are hardly new in fashion; But 2015’s edition seemed evidence of a trend of dumbing down to the masses, a trend that will shape the way we look at fashion for many years to come. Not all the new queens on fashion’s thrones sit comfortably. You can see that in Alexander Wang’s lacklustre three-year stint at Balenciaga – you can see everyone's palpable relief at not having to witness the products of Wang's struggles. One "cool downtown party" collection is enough and ought to be contained in downtown New Yuck, where it belongs. That sort of thing hardly sits comfortably at the Paris Collections, and can hardly be expected to replace Nicolas Ghesquière's work at Balenciaga. 

Ghesquière had spent 15 years reviving the nearly century-old Balenciaga before he moved on to Louis Vuitton to replace Marc Jacobs. His experiments here are also strangely both over-thought and underwhelming. 

Now there are two more mediacore collections to add to the general ugliness of what's out there.

Lanvin Pre Fall designed by Chemena Kamali and Lucio Finale

In 2015, the world woke up to the Gucci drama of an accessories designer, Alessandro Michele, replacing Frida Gianini as creative director. While many of Gianini’s collections during her seven year tenure at the helm of the label left critics scratching their heads and searching for polite euphemisms, although of course, when she succeeded the iconic Tom Ford (who truly revolutionised fashion for the Noughties), she was lauded with enough corporate praise to sink all criticism. Gianini was hailed as a second coming of sorts and beatified as a fashion saint, becoming thinner, blonder and altered beyond recognition towards the end of her reign. Now Michele is being thusly lauded too, for basically doing some pretty things, and some pretty commercial things, which in the end simply looks like a luxed up version of the hipster trend for all things vintage, a trend already a few years old, with a Wes Anderson aesthetic. It's a sort of Gucci version of the Hedi Slimane's Saint Laurent 'strategy' - give them what they already want - just better made, and priced to appropriately. Note: Lanvin's first collection (Pre Fall 2016) not by Elbaz looks like Michele's Gucci doesn't it? 

And all that is par for the course - after all it's ready-to-wear - but what of a storied couture house like Dior? After Raf Simons stepped down last November, no successor has been announced till today, even though Spring Couture shows are looming. Hopefully they are taking their time to field a visionary creator, and not some gloriefied handbag designer-with-a-proven-sales-record to dumb down fashion even further. 

Hopefully they will appoint Elbaz - he surely fits the bill.      
    

Flashback: Look Back At Men's Fashion In 2015

WORLD WORE ‘15

Look back in wonder at the year in men’s fashion trends and themes in this flashback. By Daniel Goh

This has been a big, dramatic year in fashion; Not only did men’s fashion thrust forward decisively in looks that completely broke from the past, it zoomed ahead without nostalgia or sentimentality for eras past, and menswear is finally freed to move into the 21 Century. 

Doherty, whom no fashion can now save, looking very much like Stephen Fry.

If Only Pete Doherty Was Slim

There was a sense of déjà vu when Pete Doherty, now a pudgy uncle at 36, appeared at Saint Laurent’s show in Paris last October. The former rake thin Rimbaud of rock (and former squeeze of Kate Moss), who was the “thin-spiration” behind Saint Laurent’s seminal Spring 2015 collection, appeared to be twice the size (and age!) of his former self (albeit still sweaty, unwashed and clutching a pack of cigarettes like a ball of used tissue). Nonetheless, the skinnier than thou models, squashed into frayed jeans and stovepipe leather leggings, a flail of beaded chiffon or a shrug of shrunken jacket recalled the poet/punk of The Libertines in his fey days. If only he were thin again.

In this hit collection for Saint Laurent, Hedi Slimane seemed also to be citing his own gloriously slim self, and by the way celebrating the marginalized, the freak, the fragile, the queen, the poet, making a case of relevance for the disagreeable, disgruntled, and preternaturally sour. That such a stance actually strikes at the heart of, and is a comment on, the happy, shiny hordes of Instagram, the hordes that have clicked their approval in waves of “Likes”, seems to be lost on the Social Media generation. This can only prove that the Social Media generation is dumb and lost and that Slimane is beyond cynical.

(Spring/Summer 2015 examples: Saint Laurent SS 1 8 16 17 38 46 53 61 65; Lanvin SS 8 10 14 23 38 43)

Part 1 of 4 - Part 2 will be posted up later

SLUT!

Let's all pray (to the fashion gods) that this controversy never dies down!

Of Saint Laurent Paris

“Hedi Slimane did a remarkable job. I liked last Monday’s fashion show very much: the Saint Laurent collection exceeded my expectations. The house needed both a renovation and a return to its roots and, with Hedi, we have started down that road. I totally stand by the house of Yves Saint Laurent and the decisions made by its teams or its artistic director, and I didn’t appreciate that some people tried to use me by linking my name to chatter about invitations or the seating of this or that person,” - Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman and chief executive officer of PPR, parent of Yves Saint Laurent

One of the purportedly stolen Yves Saint Laurent erotic drawings

In further Saint Laurent related news, WWD reports that Saint Laurent's business partner and long-time lover Pierre Bergé, who seems unwilling to let the late couturier lie in peace, is alleging that a portfolio full of personal items (including a journal, a portrait of his mother he did as a teenager and several "erotic drawings") was stolen from the Saint Laurent apartment several years ago. They are now in the possession of an anonymous German businessman who claims to have received it from one of Saint Laurent's former lovers, Fabrice Thomas, his chauffeur of that time.

Spring 2013: My Sacred Cows

CHANEL
One of the few collections this season that probably deserves to be studied up close, and seen worn on a moving model because the bounce and energy isn't evident in the still images. This aristocratic collection by Karl Lagerfeld actually throws up a vast array of ideas and propositions for all hours of the day - something that can't be said for many of the collections. There were brisk day dresses, easy suits, cute knits, elegant tea dresses, regal cocktail numbers and dignified formal gowns.
The tweeds were truly standouts, and beautifully coloured.

You just need to look pass the hula hoop bag, the Elizabethan pearl studs, and those plastic sombreros (which  even I don't understand!).

Bottega Veneta

A lovely, reduced collection from Tomas Maier. The burnt palette of batik colours is sensual and sultry and coupled with the romantic styling, brings to mind a story set in the tropics in the 1940s. Although these dresses glanced back at the past, they don't look dusty or cliched, just rich and intelligent.Of course the workmanship and fabrics are special, but every look bears Mr Maier's imprint and that is a true auteur's work.

DRIES VAN NOTEN
Pure romance and so perfectly balanced: This is the textbook case for the combination of soft and hard, tailored with flou, masculine with feminine, rich and poor, western and eastern. And easy to wear too!

BURBERRY PRORSUM
Christopher Bailey is tirelessly genius and this collection is wonderfully accomplished as usual, and on top of that deliciously, energetically coloured and very shapely!

Comme des Garçons
Rei Kawakubo is a true original and this collection could be a comment on the no-meaning place that fashion is at now, just a jumble of everything thrown together. A very romantic vision and what would you rather wear?

LANVIN
In a season when all you year is YSL (or any one of the handful of names we must now refer to the label), Alber Elbaz put out the definitive modern YSL collection. This reminds me that I've always thought that he was the best man for YSL. Beautiful. 

A FRESH START

Starting January 1, 2013, Stefano Pilati will be at Ermenegildo Zegna, as head of design for the brand's menswear lines, as well as creative director for Agnona, the house's women's ready-to-wear and accessories line. Mr Pilati was the brilliant, if troubled, head designer at Yves Saint Laurent post Tom Ford (since 2004); His Fall 2012 collection, shown in Paris last March, was his last for that label. 
His first collections for Ermenegildo Zegna and Agnona will be shown in June 2013.

Men's Fall 2012: Jil Sander/ Yves Saint Laurent

Don't get me wrong; I like both these collections and I adore their creators Raf Simons and Stefano Pilati but to a large extent, aren't Jil Sander (top 2) and Yves Saint Laurent (bottom 2) the same collection this season?

Daria/ Balmain

Does this not look very Emanuelle Alt? Not to mention that the aesthetics of the ad looks very YSL?

Christmas Looking Things

A tartan riding habit: Portrait of a Jacobite Lady, 1770, Cosmo Alexander

Tilda Swinton, Richard Avedon

Vogue Dec 15, 1946 (Why oh why do Vogue covers not look like this anymore? Instead we get Angelina Jolie with her dreadful, carnivorous and pendulous lips.)

Yves Saint Laurent, Fall Collection, 1965 (Isn't this wonderfully whacky?)

Nativity, Giotto, 1310s (I love the blue and gold of it, and the cute donkey in the manger!)
Roger Vivier shoe, 1966 (Made by Mr Vivier for Pauline de Rothschild)

L'Amour Fou

A new French documentary on YSL, Yves Saint Laurent L'Amour Fou, chronicles the Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge affair (they met at Christian Dior’s funeral in 1957) all the way through Mr Berge's decision last year to sell their multimillion dollar private art collection upon the designer's death in 2008. Directed by Pierre Thoretton, the 104 minute film features rare archives footage and exclusive images — some never shown before (truly rare, as their story has been such a well documented affair, the 'crazy love' of the film's title). Saint Laurent's muses, Betty Catroux and Loulou de la Falaise, predictably, put in appearances.“I only saw him happy twice a year. At the end of each collection when he was acclaimed by the room.” - Pierre Bergé

Iman YSL

These ads were shot by Gianpaolo Barbeiri. The clothes are as relevant today and could be from Spring 2011.

Spring 2011 Paris: YSL

Everyone must be overly familiar by now, with the YSL codes; So many designers these past few weeks have referenced Yves Saint Laurent's work. Stefano Pilati outdid them all, however, by bringing YSL back—to Rive Gauche. This is the collection that Marc Jacobs attempted to do in New York, and didn't, isn't it? The clothes brought home all the codes of the house, but reduced, and shorn of embellishment, into its purest essence. The neat black and gold belt that held it all together was slim, not screaming OBI! The 1970s ruffles, the printed silk, the precision-tailored jumpsuits with the discreet flared legs (cute!), and the trench are all pure Yves Saint Laurent, but the modern volume and fit, the draping and proportions are also pure Pilati. It's not genius, not on the level of Prada, but it's accomplished and chic and clever.

New Yuck Fashion Week: Snooze 2011

The just-concluded New York Fashion Week (Amen!) unveiled some very patchy collections. Very copy and paste, I mean. And I'm not talking patchwork here, even though there was a lot of patchwork going on. Designers of every strata got busy clicking and pasting. Most unapologetically, Marc Jacobs paid an obvious tribute to Yves Saint Laurent, Halston, and Sonia Rykiel, with bales of Missoni’s signature patterned knits thrown in (pictured). So literal was this 'copying' even his champions like Cathy Horyn and Suzy Menkes scrambled for polite metaphors to defend his 'work' (this was fun to read, I must say). We can just about forget about objective fashion reporting. No such thing.
Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler (can you imagine having to type this long list of names? Some one spell check this!) was 'inspired' by Prada and Chanel, right? And further down (much further down) the food chain, Marchesa a patchwork of the Dior’s greatest hits by John Galliano. There's much more. And if I'm very good, I shall put it up although I shudder at the thought of having to trawl through those pictures again. Today’s “copy and paste” click click click culture, enabled by the readily available fashion archive on the internet, the readiness and abundance of information, engenders a new generation of lazy, uninspired fashion practitioners.Instead of leading to design breakthroughs and originality, the fashion information overload, the endless and immediate availability of this and every other fashion collection simply leads to a fashion maze where every tired idea is recycled in ever quicker succession. Endlessly. It makes for mind-numbing, brain dead fashion that is New Yuck Fashion Week. It's thankfully over.
(A much longer version of this rant will be in Saturday's Business Times)

Not A Hair Out Of Place

Mr Saint Laurent somewhere in fashion heaven is getting ready to go to the shows!

YSL Fall Ad

Men's Spring 2011: Top 5 Paris

There's such a lot to love (as usual) in Paris, but the clear winner for me is Lanvin. Nothing really matters after that.

1. Lanvin: Words fail me.

2. Yohji Yamamoto: Because it's lyrical, romantic, pretty without being drag and I think for once, surprisingly light-hearted.

3. Yves Saint Laurent: Because no one else seems to like it!

4. Hermes: So faultlessly correct. It appeals to the Virgo in me. I love being morally superior and this collection would make anyone morally superior.

5. Dior: Because again, no one seems to like it, although it is wonderfully accomplished, perfectly gauged, plainly beautiful. I love the Chinese inflections, the wrap tops, the kungfu pants and the fluid draping. And I like the way Kris Van Assche is steering Dior Homme away from the prison of that narrow definition that Hedi Slimane had created.
Number 6 is Raf Simons for me.
And my fave model this season is Philipp Beirbaum: It's the Austrian thing. Plus the neck.

Men's Spring 2011: YSL

I feel compelled to say that Stefano Pilati's slight collection isn't as dull or as much of a head scratcher as some critics have deemed it to be. It surely isn't Mr Pilati at his most energetic or inspired but the looks are thought-provoking nonetheless. I like that no apparent effort seems to have gone to make anything obviously 'attractive'; Instead, the entire uncontrived thing seems to be an intellectual exercise, anti commercial, anti hype, quite dry and quietly quite fabulous. The pallete is refined, subtle. And those fez-things perched on the head? I think Mr Saint Laurent used to send them out throughout his career.