August, 29th, 2013

PARIS | HEDI SLIMANE | SAINT LAURENT | COLLECTION VII | MEN SS14

An extract from Charlie Porter’s interview with Hedi Slimane in spring 2001, after Slimane showed his first collection at Dior Homme. To underst and where is SAINT LAURENT heading, watch not read, how Hedi & Raf Simons discuss pre-PPR, now KERING, BALENCIAGA, masculinity and womenswear ..

Last year, when you didn’t show for a season, it was almost as if you and Raf were doing a kind of protest?

Yeah but there is a little s tory. I met him, I didn’t know him before, only just to say hello, and I got to have dinner with him, when I was in the middle of all my trouble at Saint Laurent and when Raf was thinking of s topping. So throughout the dinner he told me about him s topping and I told him about my situation at Saint Laurent. We said maybe we should come with banners, do like a little demonstration. Fashion on strike. Voilà, we didn’t do it. But um. It was. Yeah it was really strange coincidence, then we came back the same season.

When the troubles were happening at Saint Laurent, did you think you wouldn’t design again?

I just thought I would miss a season which was very awkward, I like it [designing] very much, obviously. It’s really difficult when you cannot work for any legal reasons. Things were really tough for me at the beginning of Saint Laurent, the house was a sha dow of what it had been. You had to go slowly and the last two seasons I started really to go on the track that I had in mind, it felt like not being able to go on..

Because you hadn’t finished what you wanted to do at Saint Laurent?

Yes I had not finished at all. I was just starting. It was something that was changing, the distribution was different, the cus tomer had changed, the age, and everything.

So it was a cultural revolution had happened. It was a little bit like it was a short film, no?

There was no way you could have done this there. There’s no way you could have carried on that vision. Oh no. Forget it. I took the door, which was really a good decision I believe and I think it’s fine. You have to move, right. I had a very very good report, I ended up having a very very good rapport with Bergé and Saint Laurent. At the beginning they were protective, you just had to prove you were not putting a cocktail Molo tov in the house.

It did seem when they came to your show [Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé were front row at Hedi’s debut Dior Homme show] ..

It did seem like a gleeful joke, funny that they were there, kind of defiant. It really appeared like that, and i suppose it was something true. But meanwhile I’ve been really close since I have left and I’m really close to Pierre Bergé, I knew, except for Saint Laurent, I knew from the beginning when I joined Dior that he would come to the show. It would have been strange if he had not come because I’m close to them. I’m not close to Yves Saint Laurent, I have met him a few times, tremen dous respect for him, it would have been very presumptuous to think that someone like Yves Saint Laurent would have come to the show. It was the only part that I didn’t know and it could have been interpreted in a way another, but then also when I left [Yves Saint Laurent] it’s not that he was very happy about it so, you know, maybe it was a way for him to say his word about it. Whether he sold his house or not, it’s still his name. It has major moral value for someone like that.

Have you spoken with Yves Saint Laurent about his time at Christian Dior, and have you learned about Christian Dior through him?

No but I did through his, there was a woman working with him since the house [Yves Saint Laurent] opened that met Saint Laurent when he was working for Dior and was also working at Dior, she was very best friend of Dior and she entered the house and was in the atelier and then the studio and that’s how she met Saint Laurent. They became really good friends, she joined Saint Laurent afterwards [after Saint Laurent left to set up his own house]. I had lunch with her and I knew I would join Dior, I couldn’t really say it [tell her], I started to ask, how was the feeling, what was the ritual, all those things. But also when you work at Saint Laurent, and when you know about Dior, you know how the tradition went on to Saint Laurent. The rituals, the certain etiquette, that came straight from Dior, all these french traditions.

SAINT LAURENT

Founded in 1961, Yves Saint Laurent is one of the world’s most prominent fashion houses. It was the first Couture house to launch, in 1966, the modern concept of luxury women’s prêt-à-porter, in a collection called « Rive Gauche». Throughout the years, its groundbreaking styles have become iconic cultural and artistic references and its founder, the couturier Yves Saint Laurent, secured a reputation as one of the twentieth century’s foremost designers. Hedi Slimane is appointed Creative and Image Direc tor of the maison Yves Saint Laurent in March 2012.

Yves Saint Laurent is a global br and at the vanguard of fashion, designing and marketing a broad range of women’s and men’s ready- to-wear products, leather goods, shoes and jewellery. Through a licence agreement with L’Oréal, it is also a major force in fragrances and cosmetics.

HEDI SLIMANE

Creative and Image Direc tor

In 1996 Pierre Bergé installs Hedi Slimane in the position of Direc tor of mens wear at Yves Saint Laurent. Later he will become Artistic Direc tor. He revives Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, based on the ‘Ateliers de Couture’ and transposes the spirit of Couture ‘au masculin’ reinterpreting ‘le tailleur’ and the ‘Dressing Up’.

In 2000 Christian Dior appoints him as Creative Direc tor of menswear where he creates Dior Homme. Slimane imposes his style and his new male silhouette, stretched. The ‘skinny look’ is relayed by his peers male and female and a dopted by the 2.0 generation. The silhouette, combined with the think black tie, becomes his signature and the start in fashion of the rock revival.

In April 2002 he is the first menswear designer to receive the CFDA award for International Designer. In July 2007 Hedi Slimane decides not to renew his contract with Dior and relocates to Los Angeles. He returns to pho tography and exhibits widely in Europe. Along with his personal work Slimane shoots s tories for major fashion magazines. California becomes the subject of many of his images and of several exhibitions. The California cycle is shown in November 2011 at Los Angele’s MOCA. Slimane presents a pho tographic installation that showcases an archive of images from this period. In March 2012 Yves Saint Laurent appoints Hedi Slimane as Creative and Image Direc tor assuming total responsibility for the br and image and all its collections. He thus returns to the fashion house of his beginnings while continuing to pursue his career in pho tography.

Born in Paris in 1968, Hedi Slimane has published several books including Anthology of a Decade 2011 by JRP-Ringier, a comprehensive lexicon of his years of music, fashion and pho tography.

Last month, Hedi Slimane told Vogue Paris that “Haute couture is a legitimate subject for Yves Saint Laurent and could resume one day”. We can’t wait to visit the new studio and atelier in Paris which are being renovated to revive the br and’s couture operations. The late Yves Saint Laurent closed his Haute Couture division in 2002.

In the meantime, we will continue Hedi’s voyage on COLLECTION VIII ..

L’ÉDITOR