The real question is: What can you take out of streetwear? Girls are all wearing miniskirts and leggings and leather jackets. We’ve already seen all of this. Streetwear never taught me anything. Consider this: Yves Saint Laurent was one of the first designers to revisit vintage. If you read his biography, you’ll see it. He used to go to London to the first secondhand markets and find clothes from the 30s. That’s how he invented the tuxedo. He bought a man’s smoking jacket and put it on one of his muses. That’s how most of his innovations began. Today you can do that type of research, but it’s hard to create a story like that, because too many have already been told about almost everything.
—This interview with YSL's designer Stefano Pilati is absolutely amazing. ("When people enter our store they imagine cashmeres, silk cravats, shirts in crepe de chine, crocodile shoes. Obviously, we make them, but it’s like hitting myself in the balls.") Also contains the phrase "when I found myself in an elevator with Kathryn Bigelow and Richard Gere riding up to Mick Jagger’s flat." HEAVEN.
link?!
This seems to be one version of the interview (yeah, where's your link?)
http://www.facebook.com/notes/costantino-della-gherardesca/the-end-of-elegance-correct-version/10150545311931452?ref=nf
That’s how he invented the tuxedo.
except he didn't.
@flatfootafleet Yeah that line just goes unquestioned. And one only need look at, oh, say, deguerotypes from the 19th century for an abundance of tuxedos - or "dinner jackets."
@flatfootafleet : But if you replace "tuxedo" with le smoking, which YSL did unquestionably invent, then the whole thing makes sense. Le smoking came about when YSL dressed his female models in old-stylee men's velvet tuxedo / smoking jackets and turned the whole thing into a brand-new and extraordinarily influential style of woman's suit (in other words, the pantsuit). Pilati should sure as hell know the relationship between the tuxedo and le smoking, so I'm going to guess a transcription error by an interviewer who doesn't speak French / doesn't know fashion terms.
@Gef the Talking Mongoose
Okey dokey. It seemed a psychotically grandiose claim. Thanks for reading it.
@Gef the Talking Mongoose Definitely the translator was unfamiliar with fashion terms and not ignorant of French; "Smoking" is the word for "tuxedo" in French. And German and probably some others.
Wikipedia has the tuxedo evolving to its current form between 1865 and 1880, on Saville Row. The one truthful thing out of that guy's mouth is that the satin collar did come from smoking jackets.
@BadUncle Except that the word "tuxedo" (which doesn't exist in French, or any language other than English) did not come out of his mouth. He almost certainly said "smoking", of which the narrower variation (that can be inferred from the next sentence referring to it being placed on a woman) is in fact an YSL invention. Just a translation error.
Also, he fine as hell.
RIGHT????