To Be Transparent

(Left to right: Dior, Saint Laurent, Vaquera): Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Dior, Saint Laurent, NATALIE IVANOVA /BFA/Vaquera

Anthony Vaccarello’s mostly nudie collection for Saint Laurent last night was nicely timed with “Sheer: The Diaphanous Creations of Yves Saint Laurent,” a new show at the legendary designer’s museum, in the elegant mansion that was his couture house and offices for nearly thirty years. It was in the mid-’60s that Saint Laurent introduced his black chiffon blouse and an evening dress decked at the waist with a thick spray of ostrich feathers. To help convey the novelty of their exposure, the museum has included some of Man Ray’s experimental rayographs.

Vaccarello’s clothes were not nearly so diaphanous — nor, come to that, as varied as the master’s. Out of 48 exits on the runway, about 38 were variations on the same look: a filmy, clingy pencil skirt over pantyhose (with a modesty panel) and long-sleeve chiffon blouses that featured a pussy bow, bias draping or a halter neck. Some styles might have been dresses but the skinny, transparent look was the same. The other clothes of note were short coats in wool, stiff black leather or caribou feathers, and a couple of liquid-looking pantsuits.

Saint Laurent Photo: Courtesy of Saint Laurent

Everyone knows by now that the point of a multimillion-dollar runway show is not so much to provoke as to promote a brand’s image further. And from that perspective, Vaccarello’s show was a spectacular success. The set designers conceived two enormously large joined circles, totaling 1,500 square meters. Then they draped the seven-meter-high walls in more than 1,000 meters of emerald velvet damask — virtually identical to the upholstery in the couture salon in Saint Laurent’s heyday. I once interviewed Catherine Deneuve on one of those green sofas. On Tuesday night, the actress was plonked down, like the rest of us, on one of those sectional sofas that ringed each room. The flooring was plywood coated in a black material to evoke wet pavement and, inevitably, to recall the nighttime Saint Laurent imagery by Helmut Newton. The show’s press notes didn’t mention Man Ray, but they described the see-through styles as “hyper-graphic X-rays.”

Saint Laurent Photo: Courtesy of Saint Laurent

Everything is linked up today, at least at the legacy brands, and it must be done on a huge scale (apparently), with a minimum of messaging. Vaccarello typically identifies a key Saint Laurent style, and then repeats and repeats it, making his own contemporary changes. A year ago, it was the broad-shoulder suit; for spring 2024, it was the famous Saint Laurent version of a saharienne. Last night, Carla Bruni and Eva Herzigova both came dressed in khaki jumpsuits, as if ready to perform a rescue mission. What will they wear to next season’s show?

Saint Laurent Photo: Courtesy of Saint Laurent

Real clothes will be in the showroom, along with key runway styles, and the Saint Laurent company, using the imagery of “hyper X-rays,” powdery makeup hues and girls in chic turbans, will create a visual universe in its marketing campaigns. It will have very little to do with reality. Indeed, coming out of the Saint Laurent show box — which could probably comfortably contain the original YSL headquarters — the collection seemed to me as vaporous as a mirage.

And I thought of something that Pierre Berge, the co-founder of the house said to me in 2000, when I asked about their haute-couture business. He said, without pity, “It’s the opposite of a business.” More and more what blows down on a runway is the opposite of an idea.

Vaquera Photo: NATALIE IVANOVA / BFA.COM/Courtesy of Vaquera

The late writer and critic Joan Acocella once wrote, “Art doesn’t start out hallowed. It starts out personal: an emergency.” Berge and Saint Laurent certainly believed that when they opened their couture house, and Yves pushed out his transgressive designs, which in the 1960s also included the baby-doll dress. The clothes of the American designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee, of Vaquera, have an unmistakable sense of urgency, with their pointed and funny money prints, baggy jeans or maxi skirts cinched with wide belts, and their DIY version of transparent tops, in draped black net, that will likely click more with their generation than Saint Laurent’s.

Dior Photo: Courtesy of Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri is guiding women’s design at Dior, which is the equivalent of a supertanker, and while she, too, rooted her spring clothes in the mid-’60s — the era of Marc Bohan, who launched the ready-to-wear line Miss Dior — this was a more expansive collection for Chiuri, whose shapes and colors can often feel stubbornly formulaic.

The change was clear from the first look: a slouchy tan pantsuit, possibly in lightweight gabardine, over a white cotton shirt. She followed up with terrific, ageless coats, including a white trench, Mod mini suits in checks that refreshed the Bohan-Dior aesthetic, a lanky pantsuit in white gabardine worn with a black turtleneck, and some silver or golden beaded fringe dresses for parties, along with long, sleeveless knit dresses edged with beading at the neck and armholes, and worn with sandals.

Dior Photo: Courtesy of Dior

The shift allowed Chiuri to escape Dior’s narrow-waist silhouette and revisit Bohan, her favorite Dior designer, notably for a hand-drawn print made for Miss Dior in 1967. It originally appeared on a scarf. And while the lettering style looks almost punk, it was conceived in the spirit of the mid-’60s — as a manifesto of change.

As Chiuri said. “The most interesting things come from this kind of combination. It helps you renovate the language.”