Evening ensemble

Fashion design in the early 1970s was dominated by ready-to-wear and sportswear, both because of new standards of casual behavior and because of the expanded interest of the bourgeoisie in fashion. In this climate, in which some mistook the couture's renewed synergy with popular fashion design as its demise, Saint Laurent created a reactionary collection intended to revive the couture, using the most luxurious fabrics, feathered turbins, passementerie ties, and horsehair-braid-reinforced petticoats. Saint Laurent refreshed the couture, making it seem desirable and distinctive in a time of ready-to-wear leadership. Acclaimed by the International Herald Tribune as "a revolution" and "the most dramatic and expensive show ever seen in Paris," Saint Laurent's Russian collection of fall/winter 1976-77 was counter-revolutionary to the 1960s.