Yves Saint Laurent

PARIS, October 5, 2006 -Yves Saint Laurent is content to stay in his Rue de Babylon apartment surrounded art - including the Warhole tableau. If he does leave, it’s usually to go buy shoes at John Lobb on Boulevard Saint Germain (Pierre Bergé drives him there in a smart car). What, if anything, he thinks of the label that now bears his name somewhat of a mystery. When comparing past to present, aside from archival models, there is now a museum full of multimedia presentations to help fill in the gap. In one video, Saint Laurent sits smoking a cigarette and ruminating. “I want my clothes to fit a woman’s body like her lover’s hands,” he says.

That kind of passionate statement is rare in an increasingly vacuous and profit-driven fashion world. For Stefano Pilati, in the collection he showed for the House of Saint Laurent on Thursday evening at the Grand Palais, passion was limited to a Greek sentiment. Models tiptoed through violets planted along the catwalk, (the flower alluding to the coming of spring and of virginity among the ancients) but the ploy came off awkwardly as stilettos sunk into the mud. And the color purple was not limited to the turf either- it blossomed into a silk oversized bolero, into bold abstract print blouses, into the folds of an organza cocktail dress, and into the swirling trains of the evening pieces.

The blossoming silhouette created by oversized ballooning pants was hardly one you could put your hands around. Ditto for evening dresses with ornaments that got so fussy that they obscured the basic form.

The strong point of the collection was the striking day wear, which was worked with large check patterns and notable for it’s hour glass shape.