Fashion Changes...
“Fashion changes, style remains” Y.S.L.Gaël Mamine, curator of the Foundation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent, devotes his days to keeping the great couturier’s legacy alive. Exhibitions, publications… The single watchword for his staff: “style.” An exclusive interview.He has “no hang ups whatsoever” in the company of those two names, those two giants. His calm, almost ineffable, personality thrives in his work, his “research projects on the history of the French couturier, a veritable investigation that inevitably meanders to the outer fringes of the fashion world — the archives, the publishing world, the theater and the press…” Sometimes it even goes so far as tracking down the entourage of a man who, by the time he was 18, in 1955, was certainly Mr. Dior’s youngest assistant. “It’s always about finding new words to express the reality of Yves’ work, based on various elements, and channeling that into an exhibition or an anthology publication. It’s the same job an archeologist has. At the moment, for example, we’re working on his Rive Gauche line. As a forerunner of ready-to-wear, Saint Laurent was smart enough to define a space for his clothes that was innovative in his time. The boutique concept offered women the ability to walk in, right off the street, and adopt the designers entire look, thanks to all those accessories.”For a foundation endowed with such extensive means — not to mention the 373 million euros in proceeds from the “sale of the century” last February — shouldn’t this be the moment to support young French designers or a House like Christian Lacroix that’s currently going through a difficult period? “Let me remind you that Pierre Bergé is president of ANDAM [the National Association for the Development of the Fashion Arts] and the IFM [the French Fashion Institute]. Our funds to assist students circulate through those channels. As far as providing logistical support directly to young designers, Mr. Saint Laurent’s atelier has been open since 1999. Members of Stefano Pilati’s studio or other students are welcome to consult the archives. We hope to pass on the House’s style in the best possible way — the safari jacket, the women’s tuxedos, the dress silhouettes from the first collections… All those pieces can inspire entire generations.”So that form of fashion epistemology seems to be right on track, as it continues to engrave the couturier’s work into our French cultural legacy. Or would you prefer the term “artistic” legacy? “I consider fashion as an art form only if the design is unique, as an element of couture, for example. Harnessing reality as translated via the designer’s parameters of reference is what creates art. You have to understand a completely romantic conception, obviously.” A former student at the École de Beaux-Arts in Dijon, then in Marseille, who better than Mr. Mamine to comment on this subject of dissension? A debate that continues to feed the critical dialogue. Just as the evolution of the Yves Saint Laurent brand since it was transferred to Elf Sanofi in 1993 (except for the haute couture line), then the sale of Elf Sanofi to Gucci (PPR) in 2000. He replies, “I think that Nicolas Ghesquière, at Balenciaga [where Mamine worked in the archives department before taking his current post at the foundation], better digested the spirit of his House than [Stefano Pilati] has at Saint Laurent. That procession of artistic directors heading up the great names in couture could be interesting if the vocabulary is mastered. I didn’t really understand the use of motifs coming out of the collections at the last Saint Laurent fashion show, for example. But the idea of working on a motif is outdated when it doesn’t take the style, the silhouette into consideration.”Is fashion as Saint Laurent knew it merely a memory?“Today, the reality of fashion is at H&M and Zara. They’re the ones who officiate over the mass production of evolving silhouettes. And business is booming! Their designers are hired to come up with clothes that immediately appear in their shop windows, and out in the entire world. Sequined jackets, jeans riddled with holes, scuzzy T-shirts that used to be haute couture are incessantly adapted and cheaply churned out, like so many ingredients in bad cooking.” In that sense, Gaël Mamine seems to elegantly give voice to another evil that has seized a fashion industry gone consumerist, indeed vulgar (see our “La Mode fait son cirque” article). An elegant way to express another evil that has seized an industry gone consumerist. Nevertheless, projects* still abound at the Foundation Bergé - Saint Laurent, daily shaping another vision — the perpetuation of “style.”(*) Jean-Michel Frank Un Décorateur dans le Paris des Années 30, an exhibition, at the Foundation through January 3, 2010.Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective at the Petit Palais, Paris, March 11 through August 29, 2010.Foundation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, 5 avenue Marceau, 75016, www.fondation-pb-ysl.net“The safari jacket, the women’s tuxedos, the dress silhouettes from the first collections… All those pieces can inspire entire generations.”
