24 posts tagged "Saint Laurent"
Rocket Man Opens LC:M
Three seasons in, and London Collections: Men has already set something of a tone with its opening events. Glad-handing with the Prince of Wales at St. James’s Palace, chewing over the trends with the PM at 10 Downing Street, and last night, breaking bread with Sir Elton John at his house in the country…the combination of grandeur and intimacy seems particular to the personality of British fashion, and its menswear in particular. After all, Savile Row, emblem of male style, distills centuries of imposing brick-and-mortar tradition into one single relationship: a man and his tailor.
The invitation to dinner in the Gallery at Windsor was extended to a fortunate forty or so by David Furnish, longtime supporter of British menswear, and GQ‘s Dylan Jones and Jo Levin. The night turned into a celebration not just of LC:M but also of Jones himself, who has just been gonged with an Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. (Journalist Hilary Alexander was also OBE-ed.) It was largely an industry crowd, bar a couple of John and Furnish’s BFs, like Louise and Theo Fennell, who’d driven over from their own country pile. Theo’s two-tone winkle-pickers looked straight out of Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent collection. “They’re mine, and they’re very old,” he corrected.
But Slimane came to mind again an hour or so later, when, dinner over, a band of Irish mid-teens called The Strypes took to the stage that had been set up in the Gallery. They played a set of fearsome garage rock that was astonishingly authoritative for kids whose parents weren’t born when bands like The Seeds and the Flamin’ Groovies created the same glorious racket first time round. The sound and style of The Strypes made them more than likely candidates for the Hedi touch. But, closer to home, Natalie Massenet was sounding slightly awed as she wondered, “Where else could you go out expecting to celebrate a fashion week and have that introduced to you by someone like Elton John at the end of the evening?” Best call it LC:M stardust.
Runway to Red Carpet
This week saw plenty of A-list step-and-repeat action—from Tuesday’s The Bling Ring premiere in New York to Wednesday’s MaxMara-underwritten Women in Film Awards in Los Angeles. January Jones (above, center) attended the latter event in a stunning dress boasting one of Mary Katrantzou’s prismatic Fall ’13 prints. Inspired by early-twentieth-century photogravures, Katrantzou screened dreamy noir landscapes across the collection’s frocks, which were then splashed with rainbow-bright accents. Jones likened the motif to something she’d colored with glitter pens as a child.
The West Coast also hosted Monday night’s Critics’ Choice Television Awards. There, Diane Kruger (above, right) hot-stepped in a vampish Nina Ricci dress—in fact, it was the same look that closed designer Peter Copping’s Fall ’13 show for the house. She amplified her pinup aesthetic with a red lip and scarlet Manolos.
Jetting east, the Big Apple boasted its fair share of paparazzi-frenzying soirées, not least of which was Sunday’s Tony Awards. Scarlett Johansson (above, left) arrived in an angular, cropped blazer from Hedi Slimane’s Fall ’13 Saint Laurent runway. Also at the Tonys, Sienna Miller glowed in a rose-petal pink strapless Burberry Prorsum Resort ’14 dress. And finally, there’s Sofia Coppola, who can seemingly do no wrong in her label of choice—Louis Vuitton. Embodying all the breathy girlishness exuded in her films, Coppola donned a flirty sequined take on a T-shirt dress to Gotham’s The Bling Ring premiere on Tuesday evening. Part sheer, part sequined, part frilled, the choice was effortless and warmly radiant.
Saint Laurent Opens in Soho
Hedi Slimane’s latest brick in the rebuilt house of Saint Laurent is now in place: As of this afternoon, the label’s first downtown store is open on Soho’s Greene Street. Saint Laurent (né Yves) has long had a presence on East 57th Street, which it maintains, but under Slimane, the direction has gone decidedly, as the marketers say, “downtown.” As one on-message Saint Laurent exec said, shrugging, at a preview this morning: “Some of my friends don’t ever make it as far as 57th Street.”
Soho feels right for the new Saint Laurent, and the 4,000-square-foot space has the look and feel of an open-plan photo studio—all light and space and monitors displaying Slimane’s campaigns—with many original details intact, from the tin ceiling to the structural columns. (The store sits in the Soho-Cast Iron Historic District, and if you believe in retail mojo, was Helmut Lang’s New York outpost in the good old days.) Bags and shoes line the marble shelves on the walls: mostly new standards like the Duffle, the Sac de Jour, and the Betty, but with a few best-selling leftovers from earlier days, too, such as the Cabas Chyc bag and the Tribute and Trib Too heels. Slimane himself picked the high-minded vintage furniture that decks out the space (by Jean Prouvé, Marcel Breuer, et al.), customized the playlist (Richard Hell and Nirvana as of this morning), and designed all the fixtures. I can personally vouch that his new collections hang on them, despite their absence above. They include not only the Spring line but select previews of pre-fall available for pre-order, which tend toward the unstintingly luxurious. For men, there are the sequined jackets worn by Daft Punk in Slimane’s photos; for women, the embellished baby-doll dress worn by Cara Delevingne in the new ad campaign. It will run you a cool $68,000. But as spaces to consider such a life-altering purchase go, the new store is very good.
Saint Laurent Paris is now open at 80 Greene Street, NYC, ysl.com.
Saint Laurent Settles Into Soho
Following the much-discussed opening of its Avenue Montaigne boutique earlier this month, Saint Laurent is set to bow a new Manhattan location on Greene Street this Monday. Naturally, the Deco-themed Soho space will be kitted out with Slimane signatures such as white marble and mirrored brass. Leading up to the store’s unveiling, we’re revealing some Slimane-lensed shots of Cara Delevingne and Cole Smith from Saint Laurent’s Fall ’13 campaign. The heady snaps debut above, exclusively on Style.com.
Saint Laurent’s new store opens on Monday, June 3, and is located at 80 Greene Street, New York, NY 10014
Baby-Doll Dresses Rise to the Occasion
Hedi Slimane sent out dresses that called to mind the “kinderwhore” fashion pioneered by Courtney Love and company during grunge’s nascent years. But the Saint Laurent designer wasn’t the only one who embraced baby dolls for Fall. At Valentino, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli updated the youthful silhouette with couture-level craftsmanship, while Emilio Pucci’s Peter Dundas and Undercover’s Jun Takahashi showed wispy lingerie-inspired takes on the trend. For proof that the abbreviated shape has legs off the catwalk, look no further than Alexa Chung, who can rock a mini like no other—those pins! Sky Ferreira, meanwhile, could’ve passed for Love’s sophisticated little sis in the sparkly Saint Laurent number she wore to the Met Gala.
Here, a collection of our favorite baby dolls.