Saint Laurent. Spring 2023 - Paris Fashion Week.
Anthony Vaccarello has been able to master the subtle and the blunt amatory of the feminine, now seven years as the creative director of Saint Laurent and with the 2020 pandemic somewhat behind us, Vaccarello's return to the runway, was his Fall 2022 show in Paris in March. Further accentuating his crafting of the Ives Saint Laurent legacy, reaffirming the Belgium designer's decadent sleekness to the luxury brand, whilst instilling Saint Laurent's hedonistic overtures. And there is no doubting the lavishness of the Saint Laurent shows, with the Spring 2023 being of no exception to its own arabesque opulence, once again utilizing the Parisian fixture of its Eiffel Tower as the backdrop. Vaccarello has taken the runway setting to new highs, despite the calamity and turmoil in the world, his latest Saint Laurent show is a benchmark to its extravagance.
But, it is Vaccarello's criss crossing times lines of the last 40 years to which I find fascinating of a designer, as noted in many of my reviews since his tenure, who has an ardent fixation on the late 1970s and early 1980s aesthetics, whilst playing with 1960s counterculture. Which defined the sexual liberation, as an important backlash against conservative values of the 1950s, later morphing into an all out hedonism of the 1970s. And there is an important element in all Vaccarello's dynamism, that one should be aware of, that being the reflected simulacrum of his hyperreal template.
As the threat of nuclear war once again descends over us, very much like the tumultuous time of the cold war that our parents and grandparents endured. Vaccarello has recharged that party of Studio 54, ala 1979 as a homage, directed at the celebritydom of the time. With Grace Jones's delphian styles as an inspiring fixture of the late 70s. Offering 49 looks in total, ranging from the nonchalant composure of the femme fatale through to its erogenous desire and romanticism that bestowed a period that fellow Belgium designer, Diane von Furstenberg who actually lived through that peroid, had recently summarized, "As a woman, it was the beginning of women liberation. It was also the sex liberation. We didn't know anything about AIDS. It was this moment in history between the invention of pill and the coming out of AIDS. So we were very free."
Satin, silk and chiffon, with an earthy and neutral palette, the collection has been orchestrated by Vaccarello to incite those emotive feelings of the epicurean of yesteryear, yet I feel that it holds a more serious and dark demur for a Spring collection. The timelines of the past 40 years maybe crossing somewhat into our current place in history, of its redux of economic and social turmoil, but the rhyme that is being playing out is without a pronounced counterculture. More of less, it is an infatuation with the digital relays through its social media feeds. Society seems to be running on the spot, within its tipping point into a global decline. Thus, Vaccarello's darkness mixed with an restrained hedonic could be the a reflection that the past cannot be emulated, but rather, one should let go.
Yet, we are still holding on.
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(A.Glass 2022)
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