Hedi Slimane is a man who wears his passion for music on his sleeve—and his trouser leg, his back, his head, and pretty much anywhere else. Any body part, in other words, that can bear an item of clothing that broadcasts its wearer's absolute surrender to rock's urgency and drive and drama.
In translating all of that into a fashion context, Slimane has created his own distinct aesthetic: part David Bowie in his elegantly wasted mid-seventies incarnation as the Thin White Duke; part Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream in his equally wasted mid-nineties phase; and, now, part Pete Doherty, ex-member of the London-based Libertines, who brings elegance, grunge, and conspicuous waste together in one tabloid-friendly package. With Gillespie, and Doherty's current squeeze, Kate Moss, in the front row, Slimane unleashed a collection that injected glam into last season's Seattle-based grunginess. Sequined jackets and jeans were the most obvious examples, but a black leather jacket decorated with leather rosettes, and a little jacket also embellished with rosettes, this time in tiny beads, suggested that early-seventies moment when Marc Bolan and Bowie would swap clothes with their wives. The back of a cropped black satin jacket featured a firework starburst of gold embroidery. A black ruffled cape over a flesh-toned ruffled shirt was a reminder of times when young rockers would scour secondhand shops for something flashy—and, preferably, sexually ambiguous.
Slimane is infatuated with the vulnerability and cockiness of those young men. He gave them a leather trench or gold Cuban-heeled boots for rock star swagger, but also shirts with big poet's bows or fragile transparent blouses for their softer side. And the long scarves and big fringed woolen capes? Clearly something a girlfriend would knit while the group was on tour.
