Word: laurents
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Along with Cocteau, the avant-garde French writer and film director whose aphorism he quotes frequently these days, Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent may be fou like a fox. After years of beguiling women into austerely tailored pantsuits, now, in this cool age of less is more and casual is all, the world's most influential couturier has stopped the parade with a collection of high-camp peasant fashions that are impractical, fantastical and egotistical. They are also subtle, sumptuous, sensual and jubilantly feminine. The overwhelming first American response, both from those who deal in clothes and those...
...princess image-the YSLook -is a deliberate assertion, a statement. It says, in the words of a Washington fashion setter who was in Paris last week, "Aren't I simply devastatingly dazzling!" It is not, at from $2,000 to $10,000 per outfit, for humble folks. Saint Laurent has used with theatrical abandon the old luxurious, tactile fabrics: satin, gold and silver lame, silk faille, velvet, taffeta, chiffon, chenille, mousseline and moire. The materials, fashioned into 106 outfits for Saint Laurent's July 28 showing, bring back blouses with billowing sleeves, bouffant skirts and, yes, soft petticoats...
Furthermore, Saint Laurent's stiff, billowing materials-though more flattering than the currently fashionable figure-revealing knit fabrics-threaten to engulf the small and puff up the large woman. The extravagant ornamentation and expensive bulk will have to be pared away by the manufacturers who will make unauthorized, mass-produced copies. But, as New York Designer Diane von Furstenberg noted, "Duplicated, it will look cheap...
Outrageous Designs. Saint Laurent, whose firm invested about $500,000 in last week's show, was optimistic that his collection would catch on. Since the Algerian-born French designer took over the couture house of his mentor Dior in 1957 at the age of 21, he has produced a series of highly successful-and often outrageous-designs, such as the Trapeze (1958) and the hobble skirt (1959). When the couturier opened his own house in 1962, he went on to launch tuxedos for women, hip boots, visor caps and, most recently, last spring's Ballets Russes collection...
Still, after reflecting on Saint Laurent's New New Look, some U.S. designers were saying at week's end that actually, it was hopelessly out of date for Americans. "The collection has no relationship to what's happening to women today," observed Ralph Lauren. Halston declared that "the costume party is over for America." Others, like Clovis Ruffin, loved it. "It reminds me of the grand old days of Paris." he said. Giorgio Sant' Angelo called it "beautiful," adding, "but to me it looks like a very old revolution...