WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1973

OMEN'S

NEWS

21

YVES SAINT LAURENT OF PARK PREDICTS:

No Major Changes In Fashion

By NINA S. HYDE

NEW YORK (SpecialT P N S ) - Yves Saint Laurent has changed the face and perhaps the future of fashion. A Parisian cosmopolite, he attracts to his circle of friends an elite group of the international, s w i n g i n g avant garde, the chic, the t a l e n t e d , and often the wealthy. But his chic can be found hanging in any American shower stall, immortalized in terry cloth. And his genius has been in translating current lifestyles into the clothes that fit them, not just for the haute couture - still dear to his designing heart but for ready-to-wear. It was he wlio made mass-produced clothes acceptable in France, lending his couture prestige to boutique shopping. And because of his awareness of people and their c h a n g i n g lifestyles, his sense of timing is unerringly accurate. His ideas and d e s i g n s have thus influenced virtually everything that women (and, increasingly, m e n ) wear today. For example, he \vas not the first to design pants for women, but he did them at exactly the right time for women to understand and accept them. He has put b e a u t i f u l a n d wearable clothes into contemporary terms. In New York recently mainly for a vacation Saint Laurent granted a rare interview in which he: Declared that it is the duty of rich women to buy expensive fashions and support haute couture or else bear responsibility for the death of an art. Maintained that, having found its place in the lives of its wearers, fashion is settled and will undergo

no more radical changes. Admitted to a newly acquired self-confidence, reflected in his designs as well as in his own changed personal appearance. Pointed to today's emphasis on self awareness and elevated consciousness as key factors in the naturalness of the new chic. Yves Saint Laurent was born 36 years ago, in Alg i c r s . His parents were "pieds noirs," the name given to the French living in Algiers. By age 15 his family moved to France. His father went to the south of France where he remains, successfully raising roses for commercial use; Saint Laurent and his mother, Lucicnne, went to Paris. At 17 Saint Laurent sold drawings to Vogue magazine and entered a couture school. Michel de Brunoff of Vogue then introduced him to Christian Dior, who hired him as a collaborator. Saint Laurent succeeded Dior as a r t i s t i c director of the house when Dior died in 1958. He stayed for a turbulent three years until he opened his own couture house in January, 1962, in the old Forain mansion. In 19SG, the first Saint Laurent Rive Gauche collection opened his name for his chain of ready-towear boutiques. He feels so strongly about the boutique collection he feels that's where he does his most creative work that to take emphasis away from his couture collection he has banned the press from the couture showings since 1971. "In couture one dress is a unique piece because of the price, the value, the workin a n s h i p , ' ' said Saint Laurent. "Yet the most important mood of fashion today is the mix, the freedom to change, the melange. That is why it is so

difficult to design for the couture; but I like difficulties." That is not say, with Saint Laurent's emphasis on and success in ready-towear, that he is about to give up couture. "Couture is necessary and must be preserved because it is the last day of the craftsman. If a woman is rich she must support the couture. Maybe it is not a law, but it is her duty. Luxury is necessary in each metier. The rich woman does not do this, the couture will die. C'est d o m m a g e . Rich women will be responsible for the decline of this art extraordinaire." Designing ready-to-wear, says Saint Lurent, is even more difficult than designing for the couture. "You must have more self-confidence, which I now have. A designer of ready-to-wear must have great self-discipline. He must be difficult with himself. In the readyto-wear I must do things that can be adapted to enough women (in varying sizes) for them to be comfortable and beautiful. I now know what is possible to do and what is not." This new c o n f i d e n c e shows too in Saint Laurent's own appearance. His beard is gone, his hair is shorter. For the first time in a long while he wears a jacket and bow tie. Blue contact lenses h a v e replaced his thick horn-rimmed glasses. "It's incredible how they have helped my astigmatism," he said.) Fashion, S a i n t Laurent says, is a thing apart from the fashion even of 10 years ago. "Before, fashion was completely something t o hide, to transform the natural body. Clothes, as in the 1920s, lowered the waistline." Contrast that with today, Saint Laurent says, when

the emphasis is on the individual. "The most important thing today is awareness. Women are more conscious of themselves as ind i v i d u a 1 s than of their clothes. Conscious of their lives, of their bodies. Everything in life is more natu r a l . Women now know themselves better psychologically and physically." This is what S a i n t Laurent successfully translates into clothes. "Clothes must be more casual no, more natural. The dress can no longer be seen before the person. The days of clothes like a panoply are finished." This is not a phase, Saint Laurent says. Nor docs it mean that women will or should be less interested in clothes. "Women care about clothes enormously," Saint Laurent said. "Only they won't use clothes as a disguise. "Women will develop a way with clothes the same as men. Clothes will be s i m p l e , basic categories like pants, shirts, sweaters. The fantasy must come from the woman more than from the clothes. By changing accessories ycu give fantasy and change." In his new Rive Gauche collection he has designed a red poplin cardigan and black poplin pants. Change the little shirt underneath and the jewelry and the same pair can be worn for day or evening, he believes. I t is true that Saint Laurent docs not try to do every kind of fashion for the various things different women do. He gets an idea and distils it. He confines himself to one statement and carries it through the collection. With it, he defines a manner of living, a lifestyle. T h i s was true when he first showed pants in 19C7. There were pants all through the collection,

not just a stab at an idea. Saint Laurent docs everything in his collection himself. A friend recalls watching him spend a half-hour in a dress rehearsal tying a scarf. But of course his way of tying scarves, his own personal touch on this detail, influenced the way s c a r v e s were worn for years. He laughed at (he suggestion that his designs, while totally current and "on targ e t , ' ' are prophetic for American fashion. But he is serious in discussing how he comes to these actual designs. "if my clothes are right, and I hclicve they are, it is because I think I understand what women want. I am interested in absolutely everything in life today. I w a n t to see everything, r e a d everything. Go to films. Read newspapers." Saint Laurent does, in fact, lead an active life. He wanders around the streets of Paris to observe what people are doing and wearing, lie goes to films, restaurants, exhibits, nightclubs. 11 is part of his selfdiscipline to be aware of everything. What comes next in fashion? Saint Laurent says, don't look for big changes. "Once we needed to have changes in fashion, new looks and new disguises. But now it is ridiculous to t h i n k thai clothes must change, that hemlines must change, that women want pants this season and not t h e next. Everything in fashion is settled, Women will change their clothes, but always within the ideas that we have no'.v developed."

Yves Saint Laurent designs for haute couture and the masses as well.

These sketches by Yves Saint Laurent were done during his New York interview. Pictured above from left to right are: poplin pants for day or evening; knickers; black crepe evening wear; and his Romanian peasant dress.
AMERICAN MALE MOST SUCCESSFULLY MANIPULATED While tlic Women's Liberation movement strides purposefully toward a world of equity among the sexes, a few female, vmc.es cry "Halt!" "You never Imd it so good" and "Why ruin a good thing?" Argentine-horn divorcee Esther Vilar goes even farther. Her book, THE MANIPULATED MAN, was first published in Germany where it stirred controversy unlimited. In it, Miss Vilar comes out and warns the male of the species that lie's being had, that women's libbers haven't a chance against the pussycat conspiracy and that the American male is the biggest sucker of all (possibly because lie wants to be). By ESTHER VILAIl Excerpted from THE MANIPULATED MAN by Esther Vilar Copyright (c) 1973 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Published by arrangement with the Publisher.

American Man Fooled Into Manipulation

The exploitation of the American male by the American Jeinale would be, a purely American affair were it not a model for women all over the world. As soon as the American female compares her situation witli that of American blacks, women in England, France and Scandinavia scream, "We are the. Niggers of the Nation." There is no country in which men are worse off than they are in the United Slates. T h c difference between a "success" and a "failure" is nowhere so clearly defined as in the U.S.A. Added to these external difficulties is the fact t h a t no other man is so thoroughly manipulated as the American male. The adult American male is manipulated so expertly that there appears to be nothing he w o u 1 d not willingly endure. And, indeed, he is exploited without scruple. In no other country do mothers so pitilessly train the male infant to perform. No other society exists where the, male sexual drive is exploited for money so unscrupu1 o u s 1 y . Nobody except the American woman so shamelessly professes a creed of profit under the guise of love. This docs not mean that American women arc cruel. Women are never cruel to Uicir men; men arc usually not important enough to be tortured. Only in movies do women ruin their men intentionally. T h i s simply means that American women, more than other women, fail to consider men as fellow human beings. Perhaps the many dangers of pioneering days caused American men to be evaluated by t h e i r usefulness to women. After all, that period in history is not that far gone. And American men prefer to see themselves in this role: a man's salary is the, yardstick of his worth. America is the only place where a badly paid professor is a bad professor, and an unsuccessful writer a bad writer. For the Latin American male, masculinity is still associated with sexual potency. For the American male, however, the association is directly with money. The American man knows: happiness comes only through women, and women are expensive. He is ready to pay that price. As a young adult he pays in advance, as a grownup he pays in instalments, and as a corpse he. is cashed in for a fortune. On the other hand, the American man views this as confirmation of his superiority. Is he not the privileged one, as he has enough money to pay for it all? Is he not the competent one, since he goes to work? Would his wife have taken on his family and surname where he not the master? Only recently a poll showed that more American men than women believe that women are suppressed, and fifty-one per cent of American men believe that the situation of the American white woman is as bad as that of the American black man.
GRATEFUL VICTIM

The American man is grateful to his wife for letting him go to work, because work lo him is a male privilege. The woman for whom he provides has made sure that he never doubts it, and he feels sorry for hex in spite of the unequivocal difference between his situation and hers. She has (Continued on Page 22)