Difficult
indeed for me to write an article like this one. The reason why is
simple.Me myself don't wanna accept that one of the most legendary
fashion houses is falling to pieces. I'll start by saying this. We
all have seen at least once the label YSL somewhere, whether it was
cosmetics or the press or even a garment. Most of us know that YSL
stands for Yves Saint Laurent, and those who know that do not need
further explanation on how amazing that house of fashion is, or at
least, was. Alber Elbaz came after Yves for no more than three
collections, then it was Hedi Slimane who re-introduced YSL
Rive Gauche Homme, a pour Homme line that he was both creativly and
designingly in charge of, until 2 years later, in 1999, when he
decided to leave the house and leave Lagerfeld crying on his own.
(Lagerfeld's favorite menswear brand was YSL after the creative
direction of Heidi. He was also the reason why Lagerfeld loss weight,
so that he could fit into Slimane's clothes). And here comes Tom
Ford. The the trendseter who managed to change the brands profile by
introducing a more sexy side of the YSL woman, setting the level high
, at least for 3 years when things started getting bit crazy.
Saint-Laurent being charged with drug abuse, alcoholism and
miss-design closed the YSL house of fashion once and for all. So we
thought. Gucci group , the owner of the YSL buisness managed to
preserve the brand and its name until Stefano's Pilati arrival in
2004. Stefano reintroduced the french style woman, with more classic
designs that promoted the french culture that so many women on earth
love. The brand was going well but there was no buzz around it
anymore, since Pilati was doing things the silent way. Nice designs
but that's all there is. No kaboom. And here comes the replacement of
the latter with a persona of the past. Retired / tired , Hedi
Slimane. And the boom actually was there. Though it was a press-only
boom and nothing more, as assigning a retired menswear designer a
womenswear thing, especially for a brand like the YSL ,brings a
million questions in the form of posts! We all waited for the Paris
fashion week, and when the first images came out, what I saw was far
from expected. If there was a tittle in what I saw, it would be :
Copy paste. Or maybe: Uninspired. From a styling perspective it was
great indeed. But the designing was so poor that caused me pain. And
then came this.
"Hedi
Slimane is changing "Yves Saint Laurent" brand name to
"Saint Laurent Paris". What Gucci Group preserved back in
2002 Hedi managed to destroy in less than a month, offering nothing
but a bad collection and a worse rename. All that cause so many
reactions that I could not read each and every one of them. Hedi
acting like a child started replying and things got messy, and then
Lady Gaga stood by him for she thought it was bullying what was
happening. Many say that any kind of publicity is good publicity,
even the bad one. I say that this only works for google services. In
fashion bad publicity is just bad publicity. Let's hope that Saint
Laurent Paris or whatever the name is , acts like a Phoenix once
more. Dies soon, resurrects later.