Year 2017 Saint Laurent

 

 

The fashion house that I have been researching and blogging about this trimester is Yves Saint Laurent (YSL).  YSL is a luxury fashion house that was founded in 1961 by designer Yves Saint Laurent and his acquaintance, Pierre Berge’, who helped with the financial portion of the company and later in life, became St. Laurent’s significant other.  Yves Saint Laurent had a successful career lasting over 40 years. He is a French Fashion Designer who had worked under Christian Dior and became Dior assistant at the age of 17. Then after Dior’s death a few years later, Yves St. Laurent became the creative director of the Dior fashion house.

After working as the creative director of Dior, Yves Saint Laurent decided to open his first couture house in 1961, with the help of former employees who had worked at Dior. The logo YSL was created by Cassandra a graphic designer. Throughout Yves Saint Laurent’s career he had designed for both men and women and has a cosmetic and perfume line. Some of the most identifiable pieces that have been showcased in most of YSL collections are the famously recognizable classic tuxedo suit for women, The Mondrian Dress, which was inspired by art, the dinner jacket, the pant suit, the safari jacket, the pea jacket/coat, and was the first designer to have created the see-through garment. Most of Yves Saint Laurent fashion trends have become iconic.

In 1999, Gucci purchased the YSL brand and paid Tom Ford to create a ready- to- wear line. In 2002, YSL closed it illustrious couture house and Gucci took over YSL. In March of 2012, Hedi Slimane was chosen for the position of Creative Director of the YSL brand. In recent months, Slimane decided to drop the Y in YSL and changed the brand name to Saint Laurent.  This might be very risky to for Hedi Slimane. I believe purpose of this change in the name was to rebrand the company and to attract a new and younger customer. This idea was seen in the winter 2012 2013 collection, this collection featured a bohemian style were as the past collection was chic and featured beautiful silhouettes that showed off the cut of the garment.

    

This photo compares the new collection with the past collections

 

 

 Forecasting is a process of gathering, evaluating, understanding, and interpreting information to help predict ideas for the future. I believe that Hedi Slimane will still be the creative director of Saint Laurent in the year 2017. Slimane has created new innovated steps to rebrand the company and showcase a new look for Saint Laurent, but he still incorporates the classic staple pieces that YSL is recognized for. I believe that we will see a younger a hip consumer purchasing YSL.

-XOXO RKP