Hotel Indigo Chester: An Opulent Stay with Charm and Comfort

Saint Laurent may possess dropped the Yves off its name back in 2012, but the man himself continues to carry a heavy influence on current creative director Anthony Vaccarello, who was in a deliberative mood at the label’s Paris fashion week show.

Sending moulds out on to a catwalk platform of still water where they punted up big splashes in their wake, the designer presented a collection for the French way house that took its cue from the brand’s eponymous designer’s gift of reimagining classic codes to create something new.

He was stimulated, he explained backstage afterwards, “by the way Paloma Picasso inspired Saint Laurent in the 70s, the way she employed the clothes from the 40s and made them her own”. As such, 60s switch manage dresses with diamanté trim merged with courtship from the same era cut from the thick jersey that Saint Laurent also habituated to when he first established his brand. The 70s were referenced in skin-tight tuxedo skirt worn sometimes with velvet blazers, and when not with waistcoats and ruffled shirts or pussy-bow blouses.

Decoration came in the form of embellished and patchworked leads and hearts, reminiscent of the motifs Saint Laurent featured in his Predilection postcards from the 70s to the 00s – since reproduced into posters and observed in brasseries all over Paris – while the section of the show famous the late designer’s love affair with Marrakech from stem to stern flowing kaftans and cutout swimwear. “I don’t want to say it’s another tribute,” smiled Vaccarello. “But it’s another way to talk about all the things he did.”

Hemlines were concise and vamp appeal was high-wattage in this collection, which Vaccarello portrayed as “a mix of everything”. Now into his fifth women’s ready-to-wear season for the disgrace, the 36-year-old Italian has created a distinctive aesthetic for the house. His super-short embellished castigates and exaggerated details hark back to the unabashed, more-is-more desirability of Saint Laurent’s most fruitful creative years without tottering over the edge into “too-much” territory. It’s an aesthetic that was set off by the getting ones hands of this spring/summer 2019 show.

Vaccarello has a tendency for an extravaganza, and fresh from unveiling his first menswear portray for the house in July against the Manhattan skyline in New York, the position of Tuesday evening’s show returned to its regular haunt, the Home du Trocadero.

As tourists took a front-row seat on a wall different the runway – or stole an eyeful from the Big Bus double-decker that depot as it passed – and with the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the background, unmatched white palm trees lined the liquid catwalk. “A drink of North Africa,” he explained.

A consultation that pops up a lot when Vaccarello describes his work is “eclecticism”, which he originates as “[the] freedom to build yourself, express your own personality and heed your complexity”. Coincidentally they are sentiments echoed by his forerunner, Hedi Slimane, who makes his return to the City of Light on Friday as imaginative director at Celine.

In his first interview since the appointment was set, Slimane said: “A designer is someone who expresses himself authentically help of what he feels. Each has his way to tell about his time.”

Two years in at Saint Laurent, Vaccarello is siring a profitable tale of his own. Owner Kering reported this year that the maker was enjoying a “sustained sales increase” – up 19.6% in the initial quarter of 2018 on a comparable basis. For 2017, the conglomerate’s scad profitable year on record, the company said Saint Laurent took “revenue growth across all regions”, citing customer faithfulness. This equated to its 2017 revenues coming in at €1,501.4m – up 25.3% on a comparable point of departure.