Paloma Picasso, the inspiration for Saint Laurent SS22

The Saint Laurent Summer 2022 collection refers to a pivotal, but not so well known, moment in the couturier’s career, a moment that opened up new free artistic paths for him, abolishing the solemn boundaries of haute couture, polite decorum and even prescriptive good taste…..

“We were invited to a friend’s house who was having a party. At one point, I don’t see Yves any more. I looked for him and found him with a young woman I didn’t know. She was wearing wedge heels, a turban on her head and things she had transformed into clothes. It was Paloma Picasso,” explains Pierre Bergé, one of the founders of Yves Saint Laurent. The daughter of Pablo Picasso stands out for her style and her jewellery designs.

Anthony Vaccarello, the brand’s creative director, wanted to pay tribute to Paloma Picasso’s independence of spirit. Her freedom, her instincts, her energy that allowed her to breathe freely. This collection is an ode to emancipation, and a call to subversive seduction, something that has always been intrinsic to the house. A celebration of a singular woman in every sense of the word, who manages to unite the masculine with the glamorous.

Meticulous cuts, even radicalised, that is the statement of the collection. Classic jackets and blazers whose structure affirms the dissolution of gender. Austere lines against revealing curves. Colour clashes, printed flowers and very long lengths. Very bourgeois false pretensions brought up to date. Accessories are more than ornamental: they create tension with the silhouette, with the bag becoming a significant gesture.

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“For some time, I have wanted to transpose this meeting between Paloma Picasso and Yves Saint Laurent, the importance of which few people realise in the designer’s creative career. It is a moment that I am sensitive to as a designer, because for me it is the defining moment when Saint Laurent’s fashion creativity became a style,” says Anthony Vaccarello.