Get Ready To Get Skinny
That’s right.
Its your favorite bi-annual binge column straight from the cold black heart of hell’s kitchen between the Italian place that used to be a Duane Reed and the Duane Reed that used to be a “legal dance house”
If you didn’t happen to hear the 8 months of bitching and moaning about Phoebe Philo leaving Celine and Hedi Slimane coming in to Celine count yourself blessed. Or you could very quickly catch up while on the 50 billion Instagram accounts dedicated to the past nine years of Phoebe and her teams work, selling bullshit merch like “RESPECT THE é”. That is not to say that Phoebe’s work wasn’t brilliant or very much worth all of the praise. Its more to say let the past be the past and the future is now old man! The new man is the old man and the new old man is still Hedi Slimane.
Quick run up on Hedi, he started at Yves Saint Laurent and quickly took over, he left then went to Christian Dior renaming it to Dior Homme. Remember that Kanye line “That’s Dior Homme not Dior homie?” that’s Hedi Slimane. Hedi started one of the first designer brands of denim, using among other things Japanese selvage denim (sound familiar?) but this was in the early 2000’s where there was no mainstream A.P.C. or Urban outfitters knock offs. He brought out the super skinny silhouette and dressed rockstars like The Kills, Franz Ferndinand, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Strokes. They even wrote songs for the Dior Homme runway shows. Karl Lagerfeld (ancient dinosaur that currently runs four different fashion houses including Chanel and Fendi and is rumored to sleep 3 hours a night and has gone on record saying he takes four baths a day) even caught the bug and lost 90 pounds at the age of 65 because he couldn’t physically fit into the suits Hedi was making at Dior Homme. Karl then paid lots of money to whoever to wipe every single picture of him pre-Hedi off of the internet. You cannot find a picture of “fat” Karl. Try it. Its impossible. Mind you Karl wasn’t really overweight, he just wasn’t massively addicted to cocaine and ate three meals a day. That didn’t matter though. not trying to bring this back to Kanye again though, but you remember his tweet to Wiz Khalifa “maybe I couldn’t be skinny and tall but I’ll settle for being the greatest artist of all time as a consolation”? That is Karl in this moment while he eats 3 almonds for dinner to fit into his suits that he didn’t even design.
Hedi decides he is done with fashion for a bit in 2007 and leaves Dior. Dior offers him his own line, Hedi doesn’t take it and still leaves. Hedi spends five years doing fashion photography, then ends up as the creative director of Yves Saint Laurent. The first thing he does is drop the Yves, and move the entire operation from Paris to Los Angeles. This is unheard of. People are losing their minds. How can you disrespect the legend and memory of Yves? Skinny black jeans don’t care, skinny black jeans moves all that shit to L.A. and shows his collection in the Palladium. The first runway show ever by a french fashion house in L.A. Its amazing. Everything is as perfect as can be. He street-casts the entire show of 44 models from unknown indie rock bands from Europe and flies them all in to L.A. Even from his very first show he launched classics that are still being ripped off by “designer” LA brands six years later.
The most important piece to yours truly however, was this pant
This pant was offered in the white and black colorway this first season for 3000 dollars and quickly sold out. I was a freshman in college at this time and couldn’t even wrap my head around a a pant that cost that much, but looks so cool. Hedi pioneered the permanent collection at Saint Laurent, and picked a handful of styles that the house would continually make and never put on sale, like black skinny jeans, and duffel coat, and an all black version of these pants. Ever since then I have dreamed about these pants, and on five separate occasions tried to buy these pants. I drove three hours to even look at these pants.
Pre-Hedi, Karl and I have something in common. We both aren’t borderline anorexic. This means that I, also, could not fit my legs into the leg holes of these pants. I tried four sizes larger than i normally wear, and still could not fit. That is dedication. This man is the true Lululemon of not letting people that shouldn’t wear these clothes into these clothes.
Hedi continually turned out amazing collections four times a year for four years. He always brought something new into his glamorized view of rock and roll fashion. He made androgyny a normal thing in men’s fashion. He brought leopard prints, ripped and bleached jeans, over-sized fair isle sweaters, skinny ties, long plaid flannel shirts, everything that you saw Justin Bieber wear and three other designers knock off, Hedi put it down the runway a year earlier. He quadrupled the yearly sales of Saint Laurent, turning it into the highest profiting brand in Luxury Conglomerate Kering’s portfolio. Finally he again called it quits, leaving Saint Laurent to go back to his photography. Luckily for us he didn’t stay away forever, and this year came back into our lives to “ruin” another Parisian fashion house. He again changed the house’s name, yet stayed in Paris. He showed his first collection and it looked eerily similar to all of his work at Dior and Saint Laurent. That isn’t to say it was bad, but more to say that Hedi had no intentions of reinventing himself or what he thought was worthy. He again put baby velvet down the runway, along with lots of leather jackets, pants, and black derbies. He introduced black pleated cropped pants this time, but not much else new. While many people moaned of the contrast of the all black Hedi Slimane show to Philo’s primary color and neutral filled shows, one thing remained clear. Hedi was back and he didn’t give a shit what people wanted him to show or do, he was going to do exactly what he thought was cool. I think he will be right. I think it’ll only be a year or so until he again creeps his skinny and bony fingers into all of fashion lives again. Maybe it’ll be black skinny jeans again or maybe it’ll be something different and skinny, but it will definitely be skinny. Start thinking about next year, and next year minus 90 lbs because skinny is back bitch.
