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Le Smoking Suit<br />
Yves Saint<br />
Laurent<br />
Muskan <strong>surana</strong> FD-F
Saint Laurent loved and respected women and wanted to provide them with freedom and power that<br />
men had. Good designers ref<strong>le</strong>cted the trend and attitude of that time but saint Laurent shaped the<br />
attitude of his time. He had an open mind towards t world. Martinique-born model Mounia very<br />
famously said that saint Laurent made her proud of her color. One of his most successful and scandalous<br />
design was the <strong>le</strong> <strong>smoking</strong> <strong>suit</strong>.
A <strong>smoking</strong> jacket is an over-garment designed to be worn whi<strong>le</strong> <strong>smoking</strong> tobacco, usually in the form of pipes and cigars. It is<br />
a mid thigh <strong>le</strong>ngth jacket made from silk , velvet or both and has shawl collar. It was usually designed with turn up cuffs and<br />
togg<strong>le</strong> or buttons or simply closed with a tie belt.<br />
in the 1850s Turkish tobacco in England became popular. After dinner, a gent<strong>le</strong>man might put on a <strong>smoking</strong> jacket and<br />
retreat to a <strong>smoking</strong> room. The Jacket was intended to absorb the smoke from his cigar or pipe and protect his clothing from<br />
falling ash.
Fashion photography echoes the influence of this <strong>suit</strong> in<br />
shoots that feature androgynous models with slicked-back<br />
hair in a mannish three-piece <strong>suit</strong>, a sty<strong>le</strong> that was first<br />
popularized in photographs by Helmut Newton.<br />
Saint Laurent was seen by many as having empowered<br />
women by giving them the option to wear clothes that were<br />
worn by men to influence power.
In the early 1930s, women’s fashion had not yet been liberated by the practicalities of World War II, when women<br />
took positions in businesses and industries whi<strong>le</strong> the men were at war. Women could be, and were, arrested if<br />
they wore pants in public, detained for “masquerading as men.”
It was the decade that saw the publication of Freud’s theories of femininity, fema<strong>le</strong> masculinity,<br />
and fema<strong>le</strong> perversion, whereby the desire to don pants for Freud was conveniently<br />
and a sure sign of <strong>le</strong>sbianism. Clothing, rather, was still perceived as a manifestation of<br />
one’s gender, and “mannish” trousers were feared to ref<strong>le</strong>ct a perversity within women.
According to biographer William J. Mann, “projected<br />
an undeniab<strong>le</strong> erotic allure,” Hepburn’s “was angular<br />
and sex<strong>le</strong>ss.” It was attached rather to her personal<br />
sense of autonomy and comfort, not to glamour.<br />
This sex<strong>le</strong>ssness, a pure form of androgyny beyond<br />
clothing sty<strong>le</strong>, is idiosyncratically Hepburn. Katharine<br />
Hepburn was the patron saint of the independent<br />
American fema<strong>le</strong>. Hepburn had her <strong>suit</strong>s made by<br />
Eddie Schmidt, the Beverly Hills tailor joked that she<br />
liked trousers three sizes too big, so they “billowed like<br />
ship’s sails as she walked”.<br />
Katharine Hepburn audacious sty<strong>le</strong> transmuted<br />
Hollywood glamorous the pants became<br />
the gateway drug to fema<strong>le</strong> perversion, jerry<br />
Lane said, resulting in a parade of “proud<br />
unpainted princesses with flaring nostrils and<br />
dungarees,” who are “startlingly frank, obviously<br />
brainy, fil<strong>le</strong>d with the new free ‘take-itor-<strong>le</strong>ave-it’<br />
spirit.”
Industry’s most bankab<strong>le</strong> actresses were expected to be feminine, submissive<br />
and soft. Instead, she was strong-wil<strong>le</strong>d, unusual, eccentric and<br />
outspoken. Describing her own life, she said: “I have not lived as a woman.<br />
I have lived as a man. I’ve just done what I damn well wanted to and made<br />
enough money to support myself, and I ain’t afraid of being alone.”
Bianca Jaggers wore the <strong>suit</strong> on her wedding day without a shirt<br />
because she was pregnant and the shirt designed for her wasn’t<br />
fitting anymore. She had a very c<strong>le</strong>ar idea of what she wanted for<br />
her wedding before going to Saint Laurent, it wasn’t a trouser <strong>suit</strong><br />
but a long narrow skirt with a jacket. He also designed a widebrimmed<br />
hat with a veil and decided that instead of carrying a<br />
bouquet she should wear a flower corsage on her wrist to go with<br />
the <strong>suit</strong>.
The first to sport it was Catherine Deneuve in 1967.<br />
The thing about a tuxedo is that it is viri<strong>le</strong> and feminine<br />
at the same time purred Catherine. at the time,<br />
it was quite something for the stuffy bourgeois set to<br />
see women “take possession of man’s attire, and the<br />
freedom it gave her. It took her out of that spot where<br />
she was fragi<strong>le</strong>.”<br />
Sanchez is something of an expert, having played<br />
muse to the late German photographer Helmut<br />
Newton, whose powerful immortalizations of <strong>le</strong><br />
<strong>smoking</strong> included the iconic 1975 Rue Aubriot series<br />
for French Vogue. “He perfectly got the gist of [<strong>le</strong><br />
<strong>smoking</strong>], and all its ambiguity,” said Sanchez.<br />
Sophisticated new attitude, <strong>le</strong> <strong>smoking</strong>, with its sharply<br />
tailored, minimalist lines, was the precursor to the<br />
power <strong>suit</strong>.This was a radical change for professional<br />
women.
To see Saint Laurent’s influence you just have to look at the women who now wear trouser <strong>suit</strong>s,<br />
influenced by his classic designs - everyone from Hillary Clinton to French justice minister Rachida<br />
Dati.<br />
Angelina Jolie hit the red carpet in a slim-cut Saint Laurent <strong>smoking</strong>. Worn with black patent<br />
<strong>le</strong>ather heels and an unbuttoned white shirt, an untied dicky bow draped seductively at the collar,<br />
the actress looked archly feminine next to her partner Brad Pitt.
When Yves Saint Laurent’s <strong>smoking</strong> made its first appearance<br />
in an haute couture col<strong>le</strong>ction, it started a revolution.<br />
A man’s artic<strong>le</strong> of clothing thus became the symbol of<br />
fema<strong>le</strong> emancipation.<br />
As the tuxedo was designed for fema<strong>le</strong>s,<br />
they were different from the normal ma<strong>le</strong><br />
tuxedo. The collar was more feminine as<br />
the shape and curve were more subt<strong>le</strong>. The<br />
waistline of the blouse was narrowed to<br />
show the body shape and pants were adjusted<br />
to help elongate the <strong>le</strong>g. It pioneered<br />
long, minimalist, androgynous sty<strong>le</strong>s for<br />
women.
Everything in Yves Saint Laurent house from the tailoring of a jacket to<br />
the construction of the most fantastical evening gown or the sewing on<br />
of sparkly hundreds and thousands was done by hand. Every col<strong>le</strong>ction<br />
began with the ideas that Saint Laurent sketches in pencil on sheets of A4<br />
paper. These were passed onto Jean-Pierre whose job it was to interpret<br />
the drawing and give it dimension and volume.<br />
The black grain de Poudre that had been used for every tuxedo that ce<strong>le</strong>brates<br />
30 years this autumn. The toi<strong>le</strong> is cut and measured on a Stockman<br />
dummy which had been customized with a litt<strong>le</strong> bit of padding here and<br />
there to the ideal shape of the YSL woman. The paper pattern will be<br />
drafted and measured and refined again and again until the jigsaw fitted<br />
precisely. Then the fabric is cut and the real work began, with the tailoring,<br />
the manipulation of the fabric with steaming and pressing to make it<br />
fit.
Few respectab<strong>le</strong> restaurants or hotels did not allow fema<strong>le</strong> guests to wear them inside.<br />
Nan Kempner was famously turned away from Le Côte Basque in New York whi<strong>le</strong><br />
wearing her YSL tuxedo <strong>suit</strong>.<br />
Yet in the defiant sty<strong>le</strong> befitting of this androgynous, no-nonsense look, she removed<br />
the bottom half and waltzed into the restaurant wearing the jacket as a thigh-skimming<br />
mini dress instead. The manager later said that for formal dining attire trousers<br />
were as un<strong>suit</strong>ab<strong>le</strong> as a bathing <strong>suit</strong>.
“What’s amazing is that I don’t think they’ve done anything as<br />
delicious, sexually, as that since,” commented the American playwright,<br />
stage director and screenwriter Arthur Laurents in the<br />
1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet. “They didn’t pretend it<br />
was anything but what it was; she was doing it to dazz<strong>le</strong> both the<br />
woman and the man, which appea<strong>le</strong>d to everybody. As it should; it<br />
was so free.”<br />
The writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp, who was<br />
also interviewed for the documentary, said: “Whereas<br />
sissy characters in movies were always a joke, there’s<br />
no sin like being a woman. When a man dresses as a<br />
woman, the audience laughs. When a woman dresses<br />
as a man, nobody laughs. They just thought she<br />
looked wonderful.”
Visual Boards
Bianca jaggers wore a <strong>smoking</strong> <strong>suit</strong> to her wedding.<br />
Bianca paraded a long white skirt with a tuxedo jacket<br />
and no shirt because she was pregnant.
In French and many other languages, the pseudo-anglicism <strong>smoking</strong><br />
is a generic term referring to any kind of tuxedo/black tie<br />
clothing. It is a false friend driving from the Victorian fashion of<br />
the <strong>smoking</strong> jacket.
catherine hepburn was one of the first person to adopt trousers Hepburn showed that your<br />
clothes should always e<strong>le</strong>vate, rather than overshadow your ability to get the job done.<br />
After saint laurent created <strong>smoking</strong> <strong>suit</strong> many actresses adopted the chic look.
A simp<strong>le</strong> garnment like <strong>smoking</strong> <strong>suit</strong> brought out a very<br />
significant change in the society in context of equality<br />
between a man and a woman.<br />
<strong>smoking</strong> <strong>suit</strong> brought a big change not only in fashion but<br />
in peop<strong>le</strong>’s minds too.
Mood Board
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