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Yves Saint Laurent Cruise Sails to New York

Chanel just jetted to St. Tropez and Dior landed in Shanghai, but for the Yves Saint Laurent Cruise 2011 collection show, designer Stefano Pilati staged it in New York for the first time on Thursday morning, June 3.

Though the address couldn’t have been more New York, on Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side with Central Park just outside the door, the building itself, the French Consulate, lent the clothes a refined air far from the hustle and bustle of the city.

“For me, the French Identity was important,” said Pilati after the show. “It’s the house, and it’s where I come from.”

Shown in three sections, Pilati started with the most tailored pieces first, like an all-white pantsuit that called to mind 1970s YSL, a belted denim trench coat and a tailored jacket paired with surprisingly sophisticated bloomers, which turned out to be the defining piece of the collection.

A navy dress with a high waist and an M.C. Escher-like print of butterflies was particularly charming, and later in the show there were prints created from cutout shapes from ‘70s YSL ads that Pilati used as pendants in his Fall 2010 collection.

There were more echoes of Fall 2010 in the tailoring, like an elegantly constructed blazer-meets-cape that gives the visual effect of draping a man’s jacket over your shoulders on an unseasonably cool evening, or the long and lean trousers.

Pilati experimented with volume at the shoulders again, as well. Whereas for Fall, he added strips of fringe to the shoulders, reminiscent of a Native American style leather jacket, here the volume was softer, in the form of ruffles outlined with contrasting piping, almost like comic book sketches.

But if Fall was dark, tough and nearly exclusively black, in the second section, “literally resort,” said Pilati, with crisp cotton bras paired with belted maxi skirts and more bloomers, Pilati gave free reign to a lush tropical color palette worthy of Carmen Miranda, with coral, fuchsia, orange and purple.

For, the third and final section, Pilati circled back to the beginning, with more elegant cocktail fare, with belted printed dresses, a very ‘70s disco jumpsuit and the final look, a version of Yves Saint Laurent’s infamous “le smoking” jacket in black paired with the up-to-the-moment bloomers. Worn with a bathing beauty turban (all the models wore them), it was a pointed lesson on sleek French chic.

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