EXCERPT: SAINT LAURENT. FALL READY-TO-WEAR 2024 - PARIS FASHION WEEK.

"...Vaccarello's darker romanticism of L.A's Chateau Marmont and NYC's Chelsea Hotel esque imprint for most of his women's collections, echoes that vain hope that one could be graced by fame.  There is at times, a voyeuristic novelty to his collections.  Which holds a simulacrum to the late Yves Saint Laurent sexual liberation opulence of the 60s and 70s, but Vaccarello has overemphasised that desire for fame and glory in his adoration of Saint Laurent.  By offering to the viewer a cause and effect, from lofty highs, there are crashing lows.  So, as noted in many of my reviews of Vaccarello's Saint Laurent, I feel that there is indeed a doomish hedonism to his styles, representing the rise and fall of ambition.  Which I find appealing.    

His Fall 2024 collection has taken this up a notch, and further into the epicurean, in fact Vaccarello's latest offering for Saint Laurent is not only dark in its overture, it is, without trying to blend a gothic element into the styles, apocalyptic.  Falling towards the 1970s and 1980s Cold War drumbeat, the styles feel dark, brooding, with a gelid sexiness to its overall impression.  When the Doomsday clock was Ten minutes to midnight in 1970 and by 1984 it was Three minutes to midnight, in 2024 it's now Ninety Seconds to doomsday.  And you would be forgiven if you felt that it has all become a hyperreal showpiece, beamed through your smartphone.  As no Cold War 2 has been called, even though there are Two major conflicts, and a French President saying NATO troops should fight against Russia in Ukraine.  A genocide of Palestinians by a Western backed Israel, all the while an American President eating an icecream, is claiming that a ceasefire is close, while Israel bombs the Gaza strip.  And far Right Wing militarists and neoconservative technocrats are claiming political power throughout the world..."

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(A.Glass 2024)

Full review:  chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2024/03/saint-laurent-fall-ready-to-wear-2024.html