Sport stars Lewis Hamilton and Maria Sharapova were the apt glitterati at Stella McCartney’s kinetic show in Paris on Monday, as Salma Hayek rocked Saint Laurent’s Nineties-nostalgia evening show in midnight black.
This is the season of the unexpected shoe.
Fashion institution Saint Laurent has been taken in an intriguing new direction with the tenure of French-born, Italian-Tunisian designer Hedi Slimane.
This season, irreverent Slimane twinned the sacred Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo — the one that broke-boundaries in fashion and changed gender stereotypes for all eternity — with plain old rubber boots. The type you dance about in at muddy festivals.
Love it or hate it, they’re going to jump off the shelves.
US Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington was seen rather furiously scribbling on a notepad during the show while wearing equally low-key leopard plimsolls.
Hermes’ designer Nadege Vanhee-Cybulski is also catching on to the unexpected-shoe trend.
The luxury giant shocked many by showcasing plain sneakers as part of their spring-summer collection.
It all pointed to the same thing.
Baggy grey knit sweaters with crumpled sleeves, short sparkling disco dresses with baggy coats of the same length, alongside tiger motif sweaters, denim minis and sparkling tiaras.
Saint Laurent’s spring-summer collection was the Nineties: grunge, mud, warts and all.
In case anyone was in doubt, the so-British rubber boots demonstrated that all this was about the rise of music festivals during the period of grunge where millions learnt the art of dancing in a field.
But the 68 looks were also so much more.
The collection was Slimane’s most exhaustive to date — taking in the glamorous ‘90s split-leg dress, as well as his signature penchant for the snake and leopard of the Seventies and Eighties, with a fabulous ostrich wrap.
One stylish, but incongruous Regency-style floral dress bucked everything and made it look like eagle-eyed Slimane had raided a local second-hand shop for inspiration.
