Commercially, Hedi Slimane has no more to prove with what he’s set out to do at Saint Laurent. In a word: selling. His thorough refurb, from advertising to video, to music connections to multiple lines of product, has turned Saint Laurent into a power brand. More than that, the success of his breaking down the house and rendering it into accessible, uncomplicated items has set off a chain reaction at the top of the designer fashion industry. Heads have been rolling and new ones put in place all over Milan, New York, and Paris as corporations scramble to cast talents they pray will be able to replicate Slimane’s magic touch with multiproduct marketing. With Alessandro Michele’s appointment at Gucci, the process has been working at speed, but in some other places there are bandwagons still stuck in the garage.
Not everyone can package up a look and whack it to the public in such a first-degree, widely understandable, and Zeitgeist-savvy way as Slimane. For Spring, one glance at the lowbrow tiaras, the sparkly see-through mini-mesh dresses, the rock-chick leather jackets, and the skinny legs of the models shoved into Wellington boots told us where he was going. To Glastonbury with Courtney and Kate it was, with an entourage of throwback shaggy-headed waifs and a caravan-load of ready-made vintage-y stuff.
Slimane was smart to suggest he was pitching it in a more down-to-earth way this season. There is a movement toward real, ordinary clothes going on, largely triggered by the left-of-field rise of the Vetements collective, which ingeniously repurposes generic garments. Slimane seemed to have tuned into that when he came up with a perfectly ordinary beige trenchcoat, sand-color camisole, jeans and black Wellingtons, a faded army-surplus shirt, patchworked denim capes, and leather bomber jackets that looked as if they could have been trawled from racks at the cheap end of Portobello Market. Say what you like about whether this is actually “design,” there is a skill in making a familiar-looking garment fit well and come off as generic enough to be absorbed into a girl’s wardrobe, and Saint Laurent’s sales have shot up because of it.
Still, the grunge and glitter theme also gave Slimane the key to turning out his more special things, too: loads of variations on the bias-cut slip dress in metallic sequins or velvet patchwork, liquid gold charmeuse or black silk, plus glam fur and feather chubbies.
Finally, though, there is only one litmus test which will make this, or any collection, sell: Is the girl on the runway someone other girls want to be? Slimane’s good at pushing classic youth-cultural buttons, but in his casting the one thing he’s not in touch with is the fact that today’s young girls want to look at other girls who represent the way they look. How long will it take for designers to realize how badly they’re cutting their own chances by not reflecting that?
