Californian-based Parisian designer Hedi Slimane is having a fashion moment right now at Saint Laurent, a post he's helmed creative director since 2012. "He's a genius," said Betty Catroux, a confidante and muse to the late designer Yves Saint Laurent. Indeed, Slimane has, in a span of three years, rebooted the label, dropped its first name, courted controversy (though, unwittingly), and skyrocketed Saint Laurent's sales since it succeeded Stefano Pilati's romanticised embroidery of the label.
Stripped off of the high-fashion that designers before Slimane has struggled to restore into its company, Slimane's "genius" was to bring high street to the ideals of luxury. He has torn up and reassembled its parts again to resemble the wardrobe of a night-life streetwalker. Seasonally, Slimane's clothes were nothing of the glamour one'd wear, say, to Swan Lake, but an amalgamation of skinny jeans, army-surplus jackets and almost-air-tight mini skirts slit to the panties. All beside the girlish accessories he'd imagined for the new Saint Laurent girl- chokers, high-inch black stilettos and ripped stockings, Slimane's girl would rather jam to a Pearl Jam concert.
From commissioning runway music with his Los Angeles peers, to featuring Californian artists on his show invites, advertisers can agree Slimane's wizardry is marketing magic, grounded in collaboration. As for the clothes this season, Slimane riffed on the battered looks of festival goers with a musical reference. (Representative: Courtney Love).
Think Glastonbury and one'd flog to death about those Wellington boots he showed, alongside the slip dresses, which closed the show sans Love's tiara accessory- that the grunge rocker would don. In between, the show was not without the repetitive pieces of an everyday wardrobe, from sparkly dresses to perfecto leather jackets, and the netted tank tops that one can order, pronto, from NastyGal.
Crowning the girl with a tiara was also a deliberate choice. As the show opened under the haunting spell of musician John Dywer's soundtrack, an atmospheric number with repetitive beats that drummed on ad infinitum, models bowled down the catwalk from a black cube- a similar fashion to Larry Bell's featured cubic artwork this season. Their summer-of-love outfits, during which showed a collage of denim, furry shrugs, and immaculately tailored blazers, were accessorized with sparkle less on the feet than bijoux-ed on top of their heads, as if to scream, "f**k me, I'm famous," rung from the same rebellious bells of Courtney Love's kinder whore aesthetic. The prom queen this season is a champ of her own wardrobe, a point Slimane has been prodding when he first showed boots, instead of heels, oversized Nirvana-like plaid shirts, instead of dinner jackets, on his debut. It's no rocket science how easy these looks could be assimilated.
How has all that worked for a luxury business that prizes itself on the conceptual and operatic designs for close to a decade has less befuddled its audience than to scurry them to think alike; to reformulate their own strategies to follow suit. Slimane's influence is based on commerce and pure marketing, churning out easy-to-pair pieces that'd fit like a missing puzzle into his wearer's closet. You didn't know you wanted Wellington boots, and you didn't know they could be styled this or that way, until you watched a Saint Laurent presentation.
And his competitors are gradually etching on, with yet another old-house Courreges revitalising its codes this Paris Fashion week, with no complete looks but as to reintroduce variations of its famous jackets. Buyers would jump for joy, customers would find that easy to digest, and the appeal is right in line to fashion's new standard of purchase: See it, like it, wear it tomorrow.
