Ensemble
Design House Yves Saint Laurent French
Designer Yves Saint Laurent French, born Algeria
Not on view
Mrs. Kempner's reliance on the suit as a staple of her daytime wardrobe extended into evening, especially Yves Saint Laurent's tuxedo-inspired "Le Smoking." Although Saint Laurent's first smoking of 1965 was an almost literal transposition of the components of a man's tuxedo to a woman's body, he soon created versions with skirts, both short and long, and as long coatdresses and jumpsuits. In this ensemble, Saint Laurent takes two recurring garment types of his oeuvre, the bolero jacket and the jumpsuit, and details them with the iconography of the tuxedo. When cut to caress the shape of a woman, traditional male forms are seductively freighted with a Helmut Newton-like androgyny.
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