Saint Laurent’s stunning new store at NorthPark is Nirvana for fans of the legendary brand. Bright and airy, the sumptuous space is decked out with white marble floors and walls, mirrored display cases and sleek black leather seating.
Even better, it boasts the largest selection of Saint Laurent goods ever offered in Dallas—four fashion stories each of women’s and men’s clothing along with wide arrays of shoes, handbags, and accessories.
Everything is displayed meticulously, as if arranged by a curator for an art exhibition. New fall goods by creative director Anthony Vaccarello are arriving steadily.
Credited with breathing new life into the women’s collections, Vaccarello revisited 1980s power looks for inspiration for fall 2019, which is punctuated by strong-shouldered silhouettes that are all about strengthening women. Statement coats, minidresses, and bolero jackets over high-waist pants abound, along with puffy mini shorts that nod at the pouf skirts of 30 years ago.
“This was a collection about dressing to kill, without being gratuitously sexy,” WWD declared. “It made you dream—and want to go out partying.”
Shots of bright colors, metallic gold, and animal prints are peppered throughout, but this collection is at heart a celebration of black in all its figure-flattering guises. Black has impact when carefully sculpted of gleaming satin, sequins, and leather accented by marabou feathers, fur, and other richly textured materials. Saint Laurent’s fall menswear also sports a lot of fete-ready black in slim four-button jackets and lean trousers.
The house, of course, was founded in 1961 by Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent. Just as he shorted his professional name to Yves Saint Laurent, the house simplified its ready-to-wear brand to Saint Laurent in 2012 under Hedi Slimane. However, accessories and beauty products continue to flaunt the iconic interlocking YSL logo.
Saint Laurent was a teenage prodigy who began as an apprentice to Christian Dior, who spotted talent in his sketches and hired him on the spot in 1953. Within a year, YSL’s designs were being sewn for Dior collections. Shortly before his unexpected death in 1957, Dior named the Algerian-born Frenchman as his successor.
Saint Laurent was only 21, but he rose to the occasion, easing Dior’s silhouette with the invention of the still-popular trapeze dress. A number of Saint Laurent’s designs for Dior can be seen in Dior: From Paris to the World on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through September 1.
After establishing his own label, Saint Laurent continued to set trends, particularly the eternally chic Le Smoking tuxedo pantsuit, the Mondrian dress, and Pop Art collection, which planted contemporary art directly onto fashion, and bohemian-gypsy style. The house has had a succession of designers since Saint Laurent retired in ill health in 1987, including Alber Elbaz, Tom Ford, Stefano Pilati and Hedi Slimane. Vaccarello was named creative director in 2016.