“Fashion fades, style is eternal” – just like his famous quote about style, the work of Yves Saint Laurent is eternal, as well, judging by the sheer amount of exhibitions devoted each year to the grand master of fashion. This time, his magnificent work takes centre stage at the iconic Bowes Museum in the UK, in an exhibition titled Yves Saint Laurent: Style is Eternal. Developed in collaboration with the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, it is the first exhibition in the UK to present a comprehensive display of the French fashion designer’s work and life. The YSL show highlights the defining elements of his vision, and the significant influence it has had on fashion and the way we understand womenswear. The exhibition highlights the diverse influences of Yves Saint Laurent and explores a number of themes, from art, lace and transparency, and Masculine – Feminine as well as featuring the different eras and styles of his creative career. Yves Saint Laurent: Style is Eternal will remain on show until 25 October 2015.

The relationship fashion has with its past is quite complex. There are, indeed, many ways of using the past: it can either be a prison to flee away from or a temple to plunder for atmospheres, shapes, vibes. We are taught that, when past is the declared source of inspiration, we are talking about a ‘revival’. The dynamics of revival seem plain: revival means taking a period and rethinking it, reconsidering it with a different awareness, that of the present, and actually remaking its objects with the memory of the mould. Revival has to do with the strength of references, and a good dose of nostalgia. Right? Wrong. It is history of fashion that nostalgia has small to nothing to do with fashion’s fascination with the past. The first ‘revival’ collection was actually thought for people who ‘did not have memories’, and was developed by one of the designers whose name is related with avant-garde: Yves Saint Laurent.

In 1971, Yves Saint Laurent presented his ‘Liberation’ collection, also called ‘Forties’, for the evident reprise of themes and variations of the war years. The collection was defined ‘hideous’ by the press, because it was a ‘sad reminder’ of a period of restriction. France felt betrayed by the elected heir of the grand couturiers. Saint Laurent himself compared the clash he provoked with the ‘scandal’ of Manet’s ‘Olympia’, finding himself both ‘sad’ and ‘delighted’ by the results of what he considered a rebellion to the static nature of Haute Couture. ‘L’important, c’est que les filles jeunes qui, elles, n’ont jamais connu cette mode, aient envie de la porter,’ he declared.

Maybe pushed both by the ‘revival craze’ fashion is experiencing in these days and the general lack of novelty in fashion, the Fondation Yves Saint Laurent Pierre Bergé and curator Olivier Saillard decided to put on stage the infamous ‘Liberation’ collection. The set, designed by Nathalie Crinière brings us inside the laboratory of the ‘enlightened’ couturier, with clothes, sketches, fabric choices and the whole line up of the eighty-pieces collection, printed human-scale on the walls, and then moves through the many pages of newspapers which strongly criticised the collection. The exhibition comes in a moment when scandal is no longer a scandalous word. It seems difficult to pinpoint a notable peak in the flat electrocardiogram of contemporary fashion, in which revival is widely used – if not abused – but with a slightly different meaning. For Saint Laurent, revival meant provocation, a ‘historical exercise’, useful to convey a brand-new message. Nowadays we seem to be as far as possible from this idea. Revival in fashion is didactic, not to say paternalistic, and dictated more by trend and market analysis than moved cultural reasons.

There surely have been other who treated the past in the way paved by YSL in 1971; Tom Ford is at the head of the legacy. The way Tom Ford reprised the Seventies in his years at Gucci – as he does today in his eponymous collection – choosing to push on its strongest and most striding feature, sex, electing it as the leading force not only of his designs, but of all the communication shaped around them. He chose a subject, a vibe, and used the forms in which this vibe came to propose it to his contemporary audience. YSL’s collection – and the exhibition that celebrates it – shows that the real feature of revival is its relevance in relation to what happens in the present. George Orwell said that ‘those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future’. Hence, to really hold – and mould – the past, we first must live and understand the present. The forward nature of fashion excludes it can be based just on nostalgia; nothing new can be done, but the ways to re-cross the past and redesign what has already been done are infinite.

In 1973, the Château de Versailles hosted one of the events rightly remembered as one of the milestones of recent history of fashion. Known as the ‘Battle of Versailles’, it was a fashion show which saw opposed five well-established French fashion houses and five new recruits who were dictating style directions on the other side of the Atlantic. The French maisons were Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent, opposed by Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows, Bill Blass, Anne Klein and Halston. The show took the shape of a competition, whose main merit was to underline, once for all, the distinctive ideas at the basis of design in Paris and in the US, respectively.

The exhibition now on stage at FIT seems to be a reprise of one of the five direct confrontations which took place during 1973, the one which saw Halston and Yves Saint Laurent directly opposed one to the other. Curated by Patricia Mears and Emma McClendon, Yves Saint Laurent + Halston: Fashioning the 70s runs through the iconic creations of both designers, focusing on differences and similarities in vision, path and outputs and trying to extend the discourse around the 70s, a period for so long set aside and which is coming again to the fore in the latest collections seen on the runways.

The exhibition holds about 80 ensembles and 20 accessories, all of them selected from the FIT’s archive, and is thematically subdivided into three areas: menswear, exoticism and historicism. The isolation of these three themes is useful to analyse the different approaches to common inspirations and shared imaginaries, which led to the delineation of two precise aesthetics. While the clothes shown can be confused or wrongly-attributed at a first glance, a thorough observation of them in comparison highlights the diverse sensibilities for forms, constructions and above all details, which carry the mark of the environment in which the two designers lived and worked. This juxtaposition of messages colonises the set – and the atmosphere – of the exhibition, which becomes in this way a territory somehow hybrid: between the stroboscopic lights of Studio 54 and the gipsy-esque attitude of bohemian Rive Gauche.

It is an occasion to reflect not only upon the work of the two designers, who still dominate the idea of the 70s we have nowadays, but also on the territorial characterisation of fashion itself; Halston’s tan ultrasuede shirt dress and YSL’s Safari Jacket are blatant examples of two dissimilar ways to read and interpret history and sources in general: the first epitomises a predilection for clean lines and basic, extremely easy design, while the second is synonymous with a more solid relationship with inspirations, which always win over commerciality. Two strong and overt directions, which can still be found in the collections showing in the two fashion strongholds: Paris with its eccentric chic and rampant and pragmatic New York. Nevertheless, the title of the exhibition, with that little plus between the two big names, proposes an addition more than an opposition; maybe suggesting that, while discussing the fashion of today, we should stop thinking about the place itself and restart from the basis – in other words, from design itself.

There are many examples, starting with Dior, who wanted to keep his homosexuality secret; but also Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, whose relationship was discovered after many years of career. With this preamble, the show aims also to encourage people to embrace their diversity and to make clear how those people have changed the rules of fashion, by transforming it into a modern social movement.

This show features approximately one hundred ensembles, from the 18th to the 21st century, over three hundred years. Subjects like androgyny, dandyism and the transgressive stylistic approach are shown together with the influence of several subcultures and street style movements. A section is dedicated to the ones who died of AIDS, along with a range representing gay marriage. The exhibition is a good way to underline human rights for each individual and will run until January 4th.

This year Christian Dior celebrates 65 years in business, long after the fashion house founder left the building. Cristóbal Balenciaga is being honoured with an exhibition in Paris 40 years after his death and Jil Sander steps back into the role as head designer of her eponymous brand. There are dozens of fashion brands that are famous for the name of the person that gave it its first stamp, whether that person is still in his or her seat. How important are these ‘fashion founder’ names for their respective brands? And is the status of the fashion houses paying homage to their founders as much as to their current createurs?

Take aside everyone with special interest in fashion. How many really knows the name of the designer behind Dior today? Average Jane does for sure know the name Christian Dior, she probably buys both his make-up and perfume as well. But the name of Dior might be as important to everyone who actually knows Raf Simons as well. Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Balmain, Emilio Pucci, Kenzo Takada and all their friends – they breathe fashion excellence. Some of the great names are still alive; some are still even with their companies. These designers have shaped much of what the business is today, and whether they smile or turn in their graves over what their successors are doing to their lines, every garment entering the runway is carrying their names and their heritage.

When Alexander McQueen, a much younger ‘genius’, tragically passed away, the death of the brand was up for immediate discussion. Even if there’s probably a few years left before anything can be told for certain, Sarah Burton is keeping the brand floating – McQueen isn’t a name that anyone will let slip away without a fight. It must be a fine balance to sustain between honouring the name you work for and staying true to your own design aesthetics, while making business happen. “If you don’t know your history, you have no future” are the words of Jil Sander who for many years has seen collections in her name being directed by someone else.

Is it the stories of old Paris and Italian family companies deriving from leather producers that add to the myth and status of today’s giants? Is it the impact that these designers once made, or is it smart business? Is this a phenomenon of the past, or will we in the future be as nostalgic about Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Thomas Tait and their younger friends? No matter what the answer might be, the names that still inspire awe in us have made a contribution to the beauty of things we still see today.

Kilimanjaro 12 / Thinking Of Collective

The twelfth issue of one of our very favourite cult magazines Kilimanjaro has hit newsstands. We’ve previously called it the “indefinable, iconoclastic and always original art/culture/fashion/film publication,” and this newest issue carries on its lovely tradition of true editorial experimentation. We loved the odd tabloid format of their last issue – and just about a year later, as magazines themselves increasingly become an endangered and ever more transitory species, the same observation about Kilimanjaro’s inventiveness rings true even now: “Filtered through the sensationalism, disposability… and the bigotry of this most hyperbolic and transitory of mediums, the serious discourse and creativity of this issue’s contents are amplified…”

This time out called “Thinking Of Collective,” the magazine comes in clever “ten of clubs” boxed set and takes on an a multilayered, onion-like form, with various supplements and features together making up the issue’s structure. And in terms of fashion, it’s stepped up quite a bit, featuring exclusive content from Yves Saint Laurent and, fittingly, gold foil throughout. And, there’s a new supplement called Kiliman, which contains twenty-five gorgeous pages of high-end mens fashion including pieces from YSL and Yamamoto. All this on tasty peach newsprint.

We’ve talked with the project’s mastermind Olu Michael Odukoya several times about past issues, including a 2010 interview, and remain impressed by his projects. And since we’re name dropping, this issue includes appearances from musician Damo Suzuki, Roman Signer, Martin Creed, Hauser & Wirth, Elad Lassry, and a full-colour supplement from Heinz Peter Knes.