Saint Laurent. Fall Ready-to-Wear 2024 - Paris Fashion Week.

 

It is very hard to define a peak, but maybe, and if you have been reading my fashion reviews since the 2020 pandemic, collectively as a society, we could be all at a major decline.  Yet, paradoxically, this may not be negative, but a reassessment of societal priorities, when all said and done, are being forced upon us, as it has numerous times in history.  The pandemic set it off.  However, it is the creative, regardless of cultures rising and falling, who faces that peak and inevitable decline after every completion of work.  So the question has to be asked, away from the general ethos of doom.  To which point does an artistic concept reach its end?  

Anthony Vaccarello's Eight year tenure with Saint Laurent as its Creative Director, is showing no signs of reaching that creative peak, in fact the Belgium designer has excelled himself in revamping the iconic brand name with his homage, that at times is not as subtle as it could be, to the hedonism of the 1970s and early to mid 1980s.  As a study in popular culture, and its echoic aestheticism of bygone eras, Vaccarello's excessiveness and his absorption of those boulavards of lost souls, from New York City to Los Angeles with the plethora of hopefuls who have moved through these City streets over the last Four decades.  And it has been for so many, that didn't make it within the countercultures of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, only to be hastily recopied in its arrogant disposition from the overconfidence of the 21st Century.  That the said decades have been solely looked at as an artistic product.  To be remarketed, without understanding and learning from its historical context.  

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.  

And this is where I find Vaccarello's collections fascinating, in trying to pinpoint through his styliations, if a counterculture is in fact emerging. Which for the most part remains very illusive.  Could it be a newfound hedonism that has unplugged itself from the digital relays? There is a analog tonal charm to his Fall 2024 collection, the gloss has been desaturated, in its yearning of portraying an amorous setting of yesteryear.  It is far the most sexually charged and revealing array from Vaccarello to date, highlighting Saint Laurent's revere of the feminine with an abundance of sheer tops, skirts and a visible nakedness.   

It is sex and oblivion, as the end draws near.

Maybe that is the ultimate protest.   A stunning collection.

___

(A.Glass 2024)  

All my Saint Laurent reviews to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search?q=Saint+LAurent