Saint Laurent set out for a barely-there Fall/Winter 2024 collection, and did not fail in delivering it.
Explaining the background behind the collection, Saint Laurent say that creative director Anthony Vaccarello “reminds us of what once was at the center of fashion by rendering it invisible: clothes.”
The collection cascades in an array of close-fitting silk designed to both “reveal and shroud” the woman underneath. While ‘shroud’ is typically a word associated with the morose, the collection takes a more modern approach, with the brand comparing the looks to “hyper-graphic X-rays”.
“Transparency – a Saint Laurent signature – is re-read, minimizing the distance between garment and skin so the two effectively meld and fabric evaporates like mist,” they explain.
There are a lot of call backs to lingerie and the naked dressing trend that we have seen so prominently in recent years.
A blue jumper stands out, with a garter-belt inspired hem, styled with knee high stockings. It’s one of the more demure looks on the runway, with a high turtle neck and long sleeves, but it fits right in amongst the sheer bodices and mesh skirting.
There is a juxtaposition in the lines of this collection, with much of the skirts hitting just below the knee in a classic style but reimagined in a daring and sheer manner to surprise and contradict.
It’s no surprise that Vaccarello’s muse was Marilyn Monroe, with the brand explaining that the collection evokes “the indelible ‘naked’ gown worn for her last public appearance”.
They ask the question: can purity be provocative? It surely seems so in this collection, which makes no attempt to conceal the female form.
There is an underlying glamour in the colour scheme, which they say was inspired by a makeup-palette: largely neutral tones with shocks of the unexpected: bright blue, a brick-maroon, and mustard yellow.
Even the location of the show evokes a boudoir aesthetic, with circular rooms lined in emerald velvet damask, which were chosen as a reference to Saint Laurent’s Parisian maison, on avenue Marceau, which is also now the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris.
It’s the kind of collection that makes you want to laze on an opulent chaise longue with one eye in a poetry book and the other on a lover: a sensual, experimental exploration of just how far they’re willing to take the barely-there aesthetic.
