Paris Fashion Week | Saint Laurent plays with transparency

(Paris) Clothing before it was one or even non-clothing: Saint Laurent developed a winter collection on Tuesday around transparency, the leitmotif of its founder.

An army of models, anonymized in morphology (wiry), hairstyle (a hat) and silhouette (skirt below the knee for all) played around the material which disappears “like a mist”, according to the note of intent of the House.

For the winter 2024 collection, Anthony Vaccarello, who has directed the creation of the French house since 2016, wanted to revisit this obsession of Yves Saint Laurent: “minimizing the distance between the fabric and the skin”.

For this show, the highlight of the second day of Paris Fashion Week, Saint Laurent remained faithful to its symbol, the Eiffel Tower, constitutive of the logo and its image by installing its show space on the Champs-de-Mars.

The guests – including the model Kate Moss, the Korean star Jisoo and the actress Charlotte Rampling – take their place amazed in an “intimate” boudoir for 500 people. Every detail of this setting, from the floor to the ceiling, including the hangings and the ambient perfume, recalls the powdery atmosphere of the fitting rooms on avenue Marceau.

In appearance, the collection is totally homogeneous, varying in a few mineral tones from gray to ocher.

In the cut-out, there are only dresses and skirts in fitted silk veil, which reveal skin, nudity and body to the point of “questioning propriety”, dares the house, sheltered from any criticism of vulgarity .

A few pieces from the wardrobe are a reminder of the classics: a brown men’s suit, a marabou feather coat.

Attracted by this contradiction, and by the suggestive power of transparency, Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) had seized, from the 1960s, materials such as chiffon, lace or tulle.

An exhibition Transparencies, the power of materials at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum is also organized in Paris until August 25.