Reading About Saint Laurent

I have been reading The Beautiful Fall by Alicia
Drake and it even thought it is not about the clothes as such, but about the
life of the designers and the lives of the “beautiful people” in the 1970s, it
has still fed my fashion obsession because I remember some of the collections
so vividly.

Although I am enjoying the book, I alternate between being
fascinated and appalled.  I am familiar with the designers and the
personalities discussed from reading fashion magazines over the years. I remember many of Saint Laurent’s collections but I was
basically only marginally aware of Karl Lagerfeld before he became the designer
for Chanel. The personalities and
lifestyle are not something I ever found appealing and I don’t believe I would
like either designer, but that doesn’t really change my opinion of their
talents as designers. I have never
really confused a person’s creativity with their personality and I have never
been one to be disillusioned or disappointed when a favorite philosopher,
writer, or designer turns out to be truly dislikeable person.

What I am enjoying is the general descriptions of the mood
and the time and place evoked by the story. I am mostly attracted to the aspects of the story dealing with Saint Laurent; simply because I have always been attracted to
Saint Laurent’s
clothes. They are definitely clothes
that define a persona, but it is one I always found appealing and one that
attracted me long after Saint Laurent stopped designing new and groundbreaking collections. I liked the combination of sensuality and untouchability
combined in the clothes, be they the day suits or the wildly impractical
collections such as the Opera collection.

I realized early on, perhaps because I was shy, the power of clothes as a mask,
of a way to present a persona to the world. When I was young I was fascinated with clothes even as my mother had
trouble getting me to comb my hair and look neat. I was fascinated by the idea of clothes as
role-playing just as I was fascinated with play-acting. I suppose I still am to some extent, but not
as much so as when I was then. Perhaps
it is just that I no longer feel as strong a need to hide behind the mask. When I was young and working in a much more
corporate environment I was attracted to suits in the Saint Laurent vein far
more than the standard, dowdy, shapeless, sexless suits that my colleagues wore
and corporate (at least IBM style corporate) America seemed to espouse. I like the powerful image of a well-cut suit
and I liked a suit that also celebrated being female. Yves Saint Laurent did this kind of suit very
well, and although many were not appropriate for business, much of his day look
could be adapted. Dressing in this kind of suit was a statement of confidence
and strength, strength I could shore myself up with even when I personally felt
insecure. Insecure, quiet, and something of a doormat I might have been, but
there was a part of me that was smart, competent, and very proud of being a
woman with all that the words female and feminine entailed. I saw no reason why I couldn’t be smarter
than the men I worked with and enjoy clothes.. Perhaps this was an extension of those confused childhood dreams I
always had, where I was the princess in the tower waiting to be rescued by the
handsome prince; except my prince always got in trouble and I had to go out and
rescue him.