by There is only one way to begin talking about the Saint Laurent men’s fashion show on Tuesday night: the boots.
Almost every model who looped around the runway wore some incomparably altitudinal thigh-highs.
These were no meek Chelseas or mere Timberlands. They were a statement in black gloss, calling to mind motorcycle cops and S&M leather daddies. At first pass, I mistook them for gothic fishing waders. On 5-foot-9-inch me, the boots would have encroached well into my gut. The weightiness of the boots lent each model a pronounced walk. A few trooped creakily (picture a suit of armor twitching to life), but most displayed a glammy Studio 54 strut.
“I thought it could be interesting to see a woman’s sexy shoes on a guy,” Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent’s creative director, said backstage before the show at the Bourse de Commerce museum.
The provocative stompers were an idea extracted not only from Yves Saint Laurent’s archive – pinned over Mr. Vaccerello’s shoulder backstage was a decades-old black-and-white photo of the Yves Saint Laurent muse Betty Catroux, posing in towering boots – but also his life story.
“I like the idea of Yves Saint Laurent at that moment where it was more dark and where he had to deal with everything we know, with all the addiction,” Mr. Vaccarello said, speaking with a refreshing candor about the troubles of a house’s founder. In this era of museum fashion retrospectives, most brands tend to heap glory on their creators while whistling past their sins.
Late in life, Mr. Saint Laurent would frequent “bad places in Paris” at night, Mr. Vaccarello said, but would manage to arrive at the office each morning in a bourgeois suit and tie. And so, for this collection, Mr. Vaccarello’s image was a sartorial mullet, “respectable up top, dirty down below.”
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Masking the models’ feet, calves and thighs were black leather boots, right out of a Robert Mapplethorpe portrait. But up top, they wore tan jackets with “don’t cross me” shoulders; trench coats befitting Deep Throat meeting Bob Woodward in a shadowy garage; Anglo-spiked Glen-checked suits; and turtlenecks in fetching autumnal tones.
If the boots were the screeching frontman, the backing band was equally compelling. Mr. Vaccarello is men’s wear’s reigning scholar of the power suit. His suits, with their pronounced peak lapels and a cut nearly as long as a peacoat, are a confident echo of the big money 1980s — even if they land on more actors than executives today.
As a whole, this sartorial tug of war, cleanly cleaved at the waistline, was one of the sharpest, most digestible ideas of the entire season. It delivered fantasy and wit in a manner that few fashion shows — preoccupied with getting those hit sneakers and bags in a shopper’s field of view — try to now.
After more than a week of fashion shows that evaporated on arrival, here, finally, at the climax, was an idea bristling with sensuality and fantasy. Not a single bare chest or exposed calf, and it still managed to be the sexiest show of the season. Provocation, as ever, takes many forms.
And so here, I’ll break the third wall to note that no, I’m not expecting many, if anyone, to really wear these boots — though I’d love to see them try. If an article about slim trousers can light up my email inbox, a debate about men wearing thigh-high boots would be like Armageddon. Bring it on.
To my eyes, it was only right that David Cronenberg, the virtuoso body-horror auteur, was in attendance at the show. For what Mr. Vaccerello put forth was an investigation of the human form, à la one of Mr. Cronenberg’s films, more than any flat attempt to sell stuff.
“I kind of like that idea of doing something bizarre,” said Mr. Vaccerello, who conceded that, no, he did not plan to wear the boots himself. Not even to the Oscars in March, where “Emilia Pérez,” the film he co-produced through Saint Laurent Productions, is up for 13 awards.
When Mr. Vaccerello walked out for his bow at the finale, he wore some low-to-the-ground Nike Air Maxes, as if to say, “Well, back to reality.”
