Saint Laurent (Instagram) presented their latest at the Neue Nationalgalerie, an icon of modernist architecture and Mies Van Der Rohe’s only project in Germany, which opened in 1968 and reopened in 2021 after a 6-year facelift.
An immense roof resting on eight pylons, with no load-bearing walls, featuring vast glass roofs and underground galleries, the Neue Nationalgalerie is a sight to see. In the chiaroscuro of a minimalist, slightly disquieting scenography, the huge stage is set for a fashion show announced by Anthony Vaccarello, the artistic director of the men’s collections on the Saint Laurent Instagram account with a line by Oscar Wilde: “Each man kills the things he loves”. As a teaser, we saw an excerpt from Jean Genet’s black-and-white short film Un chant d’amour, made in 1950. Two boys in wifebeaters exchange cigarette smoke. Heat and desire at their peak.
The parade starts at 9pm. Night falls. The lighting is twilight. Of the models with their slicked back hair, all we see at first is their silhouette: long, square jackets with massive shoulders, straight bow ties and tapered pants. This Y-shaped look is typical of the post-war era, when suits replaced military uniforms without making any concessions. In the men’s wardrobe, the art of tailoring, developed between Savile Row and Milan, signals the ultimate in elegance. Light fabrics, drapes, bows, scarves, polka dots, pleats… But since Haider Ackermann’s audacious red halter top for Timothée Chamalet at the Venice Film Festival 2022, we’ve never been so far from mid-century sexism.
“Some love too little, some too long, Some sell and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die,” so goes Oscar Wilde’s poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Following in his footsteps, Vaccarello delivers his new couture vocabulary with his own rhymes: beneath the power of shoulder pads, the fragility of bare skin. The blur invites itself into the suit. Satin, silks, drapes, transparencies, scarves with large bows and sometimes trains, make up tops and marcels that are widely indented across the chest. Polka dots also make their presence felt. Shirts feature asymmetrical buttoning. Transparent, they play on the geometry of patch pockets. Sleeveless, their delicacy is contrasted by braids. Beneath wide, criss-crossed straps, shoulders emerge, re-cut, re-framed, rounded, masculine and vulnerable all at once. Panther prints, asymmetrical sleeves, floating scarves… the man’s feminine side is asserted, gracefully displayed, without pretence but quietly, as a matter of course.
“Each man kills the thing he loves.” In this historic collection, one wonders what has died and what has been created. The entire Saint Laurent vocabulary is deployed here with both certainty and a sense of the unprecedented.
For more fashion news, visit our dedicated pages.
