SCANDAL '40
When the worlds of Yves Saint Laurent & Elsa Schiaparelli seamlessly fused in 1971
I was one of the kids who used to think the moon follows me around. I also used to intensely stare at it when it was full, feeling its natural pull and mystery. Later when I found out my moon is in Scorpio, a lot of things made sense in my life.
Yves Saint Laurent’s Spring 1971 collection is the one collection, besides the Opéra/Ballet Russes event of Fall/Winter 1976, that became emblematic with YSL - shocking, perversive and misunderstood. This collection and I go way back - I first visited Paris at 18. My first venture alone outside Pakistan to the city where I would eventually live and study for a cool and eventful 6 years. This was for a short course in Fashion History at the PCA school, formerly Parsons Paris.
The odds were in my favour that the curriculum included a visit to the YSL Museum where the Scandal Collection was being celebrated.
Upon arrival I found out the peasantry was interdit take any photos inside hence my only souvenir is this Instagram post but who’s to say I didn’t try to film once inside…
The collection was shocking because it presented 1940s silhouettes and styles in post-war France where any reference to the Second World War was still sour and bitter, at least in the minds of the grown adults working in the press who had experienced it directly.
Perversive because it was Yves’ personal joke. He was playing around with his own memories of the 1940s like the dresses and accessories his mother wore on one particular occasion when she went out to dance mixed with feelings of angst at the uptight nature of couture. He was also feeling horny and no one had sent out models bare chested wearing homoerotic Grecian prints in diaphanous fabric before in a couture salon.
It was misunderstood because often a piece of art, fashion or music needs to sit through the passage of time because it is simply too challenging and ‘new’ for the era it comes along in. Yet, there is enough evidence that the collection was monumental in cementing YSL’s status as a visionary because despite the industry reaction, the fashion admirers and lovers understood it. Retro was born!
Yves’ encounter with Paloma Picasso certainly led to the discovery of a design muse. She influenced him. Paloma’s obsession with vintage flea market finds as an effort to carve out her personal space through her dressing, carrying the heavy last name of her famous father, also had a major effect. The uncommon shades of lipsticks and nail colour, the wedge heels, the plasticky looking accessories. The girl who smokes cigarettes and is not afraid of taking risks and looking like a ‘fool’.
Elsa Schiaparelli called her 1938 couture collection Cosmique. Elsa had fond memories of her uncle Giovanni Schiaparelli who was an astronomer and her love of stargazing was born through that relationship. This collection produced a deep blue velvet jacket with the most astounding embroidery ever found on an Elsa piece. I have gawked at it 3 times as it’s currently on display in the Schiaparelli exhibit at the V&A museum here in London.
Admiring it, the connections were made immediately in my mind. Yves specifically created a blue jacket for the Scandal Collection, look 51, blue satin with embroidery in the shape of a huge star and swirly dreamy ribbons in reflecting paillettes. Anjelica Huston modelled this collection for Italian Vogue wearing a black topstitched hat decked out in pins in the shapes of the moon and stars. Tiny rhinestones in varying size. They were featured throughout the collection, specifically in Look 4, with model Jacqueline, whose last name is surprisingly nowhere to be found online, wearing a smoking suit with shorts and nothing where a blouse was expected but two rhinestone chains crossed over each other across the chest. A haute couture scandal indeed because you have to understand - this was the arena of an older wealthy clientele, usually conservative and square, who were not going to flash their chest in public let alone wear a 1940s inspired suit with lapels extended beyond the armhole seam. But think about what that decade eventually became known for…
In my years of collecting YSL, I have been lucky enough to find a velvet blazer from the Scandal Collection - one from the mens ready to wear ‘rive gauche’ collection - a vintage victory as those collections weren’t as widespread as the womens. In a deep blue velvet with the lapels in question. With patch pockets and a narrow hip, no back vent, tight like armour, cut to impress.
Along with these, those pins I mentioned on Anjelica Huston are also a part of my collection so I pinned them on and posed with a gorgeous Graham Smith turban hat decorated with rhinestones which fits perfectly into the theme we’ve discussed. For further reading I suggest the book ‘The Beautiful Fall’ by Alicia Drake to vicariously live through the sex and drug fueled early years of the 1970s in Paris.
I’m Abdul and I am really glad if you made it this far. Please share your thots in the comments below. My instagram is vintagebyabdul_ and you can find my vintage pieces to buy at vintagebyabdul.com :)