Cool is as intangibly elusive as a Gauloises exhalation into a high breeze. Unless you live in certain cities—of which Paris is one—and know certain people, like certain music, go to certain places, are of a certain age, have a certain mien, and are very, very lucky, well, the chances of ever being in the thick of it are marginal. And, of course, if you care, then you're almost definitely not.
So what to do? Well, Hedi Slimane can help. Amid the endless, heated dissection of his work at Saint Laurent, what hasn't really been mentioned is his clothes' ability to confer that ineffable quality on the wearer. Today's show was a case in point.
The illumination was, naturally, cursory. But as Slimane's models strode from one pool of half light into another, a collage of highly stylized, highly recognizable archetypes presented themselves like wisps. A fitted three-button caban, inverse-color Breton, and supertight jeans. A black jacket and polo-neck worn with supertight black jeans scarred by zippers. A grunge-touched high olive nylon bomber above a leopard sweater, plus black jeans (supertight). It's probably best to stop specifying the tightness of the pants. They were all tight—some to the point where they made Rick Owens' contribution to the conversation about male anatomy earlier this week look coy. The only elements as consistent were the 8-centimeter heels on boots for both boys and girls.
But one could describe the outfits ad nauseam without ever getting to the rub. Hedi's boys, girls, and inbetweeners are an artfully assembled off-the-rack simulacra of cool. When they're amplified through Slimane's unwholesome instinct to shrink—because cool is never wholesome—they come to represent an instantly accessible gateway to a destination otherwise verboten.
Backstage, Slimane said: "I just issued a project called Paris Sessions, which is about a young generation of musicians in Paris, and the show is about them, really. It is an homage." Thus the pins on those berets reflected the lyrics of a song by Mystere written especially for this evening's show. And it was surely some of those young musicians—with cool names that include Vickie Chérie, Leo Bear Creek, and Melody Prochet—who sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the front row. But whether he's referencing his beloved American musical scenes or the contemporary Parisian one, the power of Slimane's clothes is that, to those who care, they are the coolest clothes on earth.
