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Yves Saint Laurent

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PARIS, January 25, 2011
By Tim Blanks
Following his trawl through Yves Saint Laurent's greatest bits for Spring, Stefano Pilati's pre-fall outing zeroed in on one particularly spectacular moment in Yves's particularly spectacular career: the epochal Opium couture collection from 1977. Though he was obviously unable to duplicate the decadent opulence of the original, Pilati adapted a key print from the archive and incorporated hints of Orientalia, subtle in a quilted cape and an embossed leather jacket, more obvious in a black leather dress with a samurai shoulder and frog closings.

Pilati is developing into an astute channeler of Saint Laurent's glory days. The chemisiers and tailleurs were very much in-the-spirit-of. The high-waisted box-pleated skirt, the belted cape-dress, the cropped pants, the culottes—all captured YSL's innate feel for the haute bourgeoisie. The fabrics (particularly a dry wool tricotine) and the colors (fuchsia, jade, emerald) also evoked the mid-seventies of Opium. The look is as potent now as it was then, even more so when Pilati reconfigured Le Smoking as a wide-legged jumpsuit.

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