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Enough of the tits.
That’s all I could think when another Saint Laurent model showed up wearing what was basically a nylon stocking transformed into a dress. Or a blouse with a bow. Or a pencil skirt. Or a gathered halter; Whatever it was, it was tight and transparent, often covering the body and always exposing not only the nipples in abundance, but also below the waist, the briefs cut to the hip bone like an aerobics leotard from the 80s. Work it out, honey.
Of the 48 looks that teetered on sharp stilettos at the Saint Laurent show, only 12 had no breasts front and center (and of those 12, three were minidresses with their own built-in garter belts to attach to the stockings below ). ). The photographs cannot even be published in this family newspaper.
Forget about the practicality of making a pantyhose dress or the question of who would want to wear it in the first place. At this stage of the 21st century, such transparency seems the most trite form of misogynistic and fake fashionable provocation. One that is particularly misjudged given the current politics of women’s bodies. They are already being treated as objects, do we really need more objectification?
Perhaps at some point, when Yves Saint Laurent was beginning to push the boundaries and make a transparent blouse back in 1966So much visible skin was shocking and subversive in public or on a fashion catwalk. Perhaps at first it was empowering: an escape from the prison of old customs and outdated gender rules.
Perhaps Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent’s creative director, was dating back to that time (the exhibition space, two large round rooms, was adorned with mint-green velvet damask curtains, like the salons of the hôtel particulier on Avenue Marceau, where lived Mr. Laurent once he was courted and the smell of opium was transmitted into the air). Perhaps, as the show notes suggested, he was flouting decorum. Perhaps he was taking the recent trend of naked dressing to its ultimate end. Maybe it was a subversive way to get everyone to appreciate the clothes. When a pantsuit finally appeared (there were two at the show, baggy double-breasted styles) or a giant marabou coat, it was a huge relief, they looked fabulous.
Or perhaps Vaccarello was simply trying to gain promotion among a population fed up with too much fashion and too few ideas. If so, good impulse, wrong execution.
Transgression requires more nuance than an almost bare chest (own them, given that). As a result, all that exposure, which for the most part had the effect of revealing how painfully thin many of the models were, and all those breasts simply made for a disconcertingly late start to the final week of what has been a rocky fashion season. , in which many designers have resorted to the banal (look! a loden coat!). Especially combined with the Dior show, also in reverse, where designer Maria Grazia Chiuri chose a Miss Dior collection from 1967 as a starting point.
Not even Miss Dior, the perfume that bears the name catherine dior, Christian’s younger sister and a member of the French Resistance who spent time in a concentration camp and to whom Christian dedicated his life. Rather, the Miss Dior collection: the first attempt to introduce a ready-to-wear line into the house under the direction of then-creative director Marc Bohan. It represented, Chiuri said in a preview, a new silhouette for a new era and a new customer, one that was looser and more functional than the original New Look silhouette; one more oriented towards a life of action than a life of decoration.
(To further underline the action side of things, Ms. Chiuri commissioned an installation by Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni, who creates abstract armor-like structures in bamboo and photographs the way they transform women into a cross between warriors mythical and angels. Although the nine exoskeletons in the center of the show space, fascinating as they were, mostly confusing things).
To make the connection even harder to miss, Chiuri painted what looked like giant Miss Dior graffiti, but was actually a reproduction of the original logo, on ’60s mod trench coats, A-line skirt suits, and skirts. in black, white and beige. jackets. Which weren’t the classic Dior Bar jackets, with their fitted waists and flared hips (Chiuri freed herself from that particular bondage), but had a wider, looser silhouette. They were cute, as were the more subtle Miss Diors on the buckles of low-heeled, square-toed Mary Janes, and embroidery on the seams of stockings like handwritten doodles, although even better were the evening looks with metallic flapper fringes, knitted dresses. long sleeveless dresses, which had nothing to do with Miss Dior.
Women want to feel like a walking brand advertisement as much as they want to walk around showing off their knockers to the world. It’s easy to pay lip service to empowerment and liberation, and tempting to use it as a marketing hook, but it’s harder to define what they might actually be like, at least today, compared to sometime in the last century.
Maybe, with luck, a designer will find a solution. After all, that’s the job. But this is surely not it.