This, what Hedi Slimane is doing at Saint Laurent is rude. Simply impolite. After seeing the spring-summer 2016 collection, I wonder what other designers think. They surely feel an unbearable frustration. Keeping up with fashion industry, season-to-season, is hard. And when they compare their hard work with Hedi’s, they just retire for a ten-day escape to the country-side. Hedi Slimane is praised for nothing – or at least, for his truly effortless fashion which doesn’t need much of thinking. Saint Laurent’s fashion became as shallow as Moschino by Jeremy Scott, or even to a bigger extend.
So, the SS16 collection is an explosion of smarmy eroticism – sheer slip-dresses, trashy fish-net tops and kitsch, gold sandals look tasteless and definitely not as expensive as they are. There is no big deal that the feather boa was made by the Parisian couture assistants, if it looks like a stolen prop from an opera. The tiaras don’t need any comment. And “free the nipple” moments were meant to be so “accidental”, that the overall effect felt pretentious and artificial. The solemn faces of models (and Agyness Deyn) just helped Hedi Slimane say out loud – “I am the designer at YSL and I really don’t care“. If everybody, except a few of critics and consciously thinking clients, adore this collection, then where is fashion heading off to? Hopefully not to a pair of basic jeans and an effing tank top.