Saint Laurent mixes tweed with fetish-style catsuits

Luxury fashion house Yves Saint Laurent juxtaposed staid tweed jackets with fetish-style catsuits when it showed its winter collection at Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday.

At times though, the dramatic setting for the catwalk show threatened to upstage the clothes: the models paraded through a cavernous, pitchblack space, each one bathed in a circle of light from floodlights.

Celebrities including actress Zoe Kravitz and Hailey Baldwin, the model married to performer Justin Bieber, watched the show in Paris’ Trocadero district in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

The women’s ready-to-wear collection, overseen by Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello, stuck to its theme of boldly mixing contrasting styles.

From the waist up, models were dressed demurely in pussy bow blouses and conventionally-tailored tweed jackets. Peaking out from beneath were glistening skin-tight trousers made of what appeared to be vinyl or PVC.

Some of the outfits leant towards the daring; in one case, a PVC corset barely concealed by a full-length coat that was worn unbuttoned.

Other outfits took a safer route, but still with a nod to fetishism. One model walked down the catwalk in a loose-fitting jacket worn with culottes that were short enough to reveal her thigh-length PVC boots.

The fashion house was founded by Yves Saint Laurent, widely credited with revolutionising women’s fashion. Saint Laurent died in 2008 and succeeded as creative director first by Hedi Slimane, and then, from 2016, by Vaccarello.

The brand is owned by the Kering SA luxury goods conglomerate, which also owns the Gucci and Balenciaga labels.