Trapezoids In Grayscale

by Stacy Stewart Smith

The late couturier, Yves Saint Laurent, made many historical contributions to fashion. Some are now so embedded in the way women dress (pants suits, slacks, the Safari jacket and Le Smoking, etc.) that we’ve unknowingly dismissed that he was the first to introduce them to contemporary style. On the opposite and deeper side of his designer genius is everything ultra-feminine that he developed from a fascination with world cultures, fine art painters, and the performing arts. It isn’t easy to look back in time and appreciate the necessity of literal folkloric ornamentation for the sake of vogue but herein is a crucial Saint Laurent ingredient. He never perceived the couture as current mode; it was a type of opium fantasy. Saint Laurent’s couture offerings, were to his clients, kindred to the secret places children dressed in costumes go when they whisper to imaginary friends at pretend tea parties. 

This season at Saint Laurent (also the new way to reference the house), the prêt-à-por·ter collection is sleek such that it’s termed the “Matrix Look” (after the costumes from the American films written and directed by the Wachowskis). However, when you scrutinize each ensemble’s components, original references scream from beneath the PVC coats and boy shorts. A few allusions point to apparel displayed on the pages of this editorial. Although it is not necessarily a recent trend within itself, this burgeoning lean towards the peasant emphasis emerged from Russian culture. It became a global style movement more than forty years ago.

In the fall/winter season of 1976-77, Yves Saint Laurent presented couture partly inspired by Léon Bakst’s costumes for the Ballet Russe that he creatively entitled the “Russian Collection.” If you research the collection, you’ll find photos of opulent peasant dresses hand-stitched in the costliest materials available. The frocks were never intended for “les misérables,” for many affluent couture clients view their wardrobes as fantasy costumes used to imitate the other-ordinary. 

Saint Laurent’s love affair with things Russian publicly manifested in his early career after the death of Christian Dior. In 1957, he became the new head designer of the house and in 1959 premiered models wearing Dior suits and dresses on Moscow streets (then the Soviet Union). It was in this same collection that Yves Saint Laurent unveiled the Trapeze (a bell-shaped dress), which is likely the combination of a Russian rubakha (a type of shirt tunic) and a sarafan (a long, trapezoidal Russian jumper dress).