In the gloom of backstage and beyond the restless human static of besuited security giants, street-cast gamines, and Lenny Kravitz, Saint Laurent's creative director, Hedi Slimane, looked good. His hair is a bit longer, his cheeks have partially unhollowed, his manner seemed gregarious, and his mien untwitchy. As house policy dictates (really, dictates), he didn't chat on the record—this oracle's muteness is its message—but it appears that California life agrees with him.
This collection, entitled Surf Sound and subtitled "A Tribute to Contemporary Californian Surf Music Culture," was Slimane's riff on that home turf. Ultimately, it was a Cali-flavored serving of the same thrift shop, music scene, alt-cool ingredients that have been the recipe for Slimane's commercial and critical (depending on which critic you're talking to) galvanization of this house.
Haters gonna hate. And you could easily—and with reason—assert that the pre-grimed "Surf" pseudo-Keds, the bobble hats, the Bill & Ted's bleached jean gilet with pink leopard-trim collar, the tie-dye sweats, the frayed-hem check shirts, and, indeed, any number of other pieces here—with the exception of some couture-fashioned tuxedo jackets and bombers—were expensively assembled simulacra of cheap items one could find in any San Diego disposal sale. But that would both miss the nub of Slimane's power and simultaneously amplify it (because nothing feeds desire like the perception of disapproval). The word "curator," so often so foully abused today, truly applies to him. The excitable youngsters he casts—four in five of today's hailed from California—the artists and musicians he commissions, and the clothes he chooses to muster as a representation of the tattered archetype that he is trying to evoke are all faultlessly assembled.
