Paris is always a good idea. Or at least, so we thought. Like every great capital, La Lumiere has had its appeal somewhat dented by the global pandemic, but even if we can’t go (or shouldn’t) it’s important to know that it’s still there. That it’s still achingly stylish, impossibly beautiful and languidly cool. Enter Saint Laurent, whose new Spring/Summer ’21 collection film No Matter How Long The Night Is, serves to remind you of all the virtues of the city, and the garms it inspires.
Illustrating Paris’s enduring architectural majesty, the film sees models, clad in the SS21 collection, leaping defiantly between Mansard roofs, over aged parapets and at one point, smashing downward through the domed glass roof of the Grand Palais. Why are they running? We don’t really know, but as night descends, the disparate gang is united at an epic runway, conducted (digitally, one assumes) amongst the brutal uprights of the Eiffel Tower.
The mood is urgent, expansive and tres, tres chic. The clothes are, as is to be expected from Saint Laurent and its creiative director, Anthony Vaccarello, elegantly grungey. There is lots of black, lots of long hair, leather polka dots, cigarette-thin denim, tattoos and almost-not-there footwear. It is what a rock star would wear for a summer in Hydra. It Is very, very cool, and very, very Parisian. There are a few brands vying for supremacy in that luxury-post-punk milieu, but is anyone doing it better, or more consistently, than Saint Laurent?
No Matter How Long The Night Is comes hot on the heels of Sportin’ Life, an Abel Ferrara-directed documentary, directed by Saint Laurent. The film, which premiered at the Venice Film festival just last week, is a “documentary on the making of documentaries”, according to Ferrara, and filmed for the most part during the making of Siberia, Abel’s 2019 production.
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