Helmut Lang x Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent Rive Droite collaboration
As part of the Saint Laurent Rive Droite project, Creative Director Anthony Vaccarello has decided to give his creations to designer and artist Helmut Lang to employ as raw materials for a set of unique sculptures.
In his quest for new partnerships and ideas to expand the identity of Saint Laurent, Vaccarello has handpicked Lang, whose body of work in fashion can be seen as an understated influence upon Anthony’s vision. He has always admired and respected Lang, who made a name for himself by inventing a brand new design language that embodies minimalism, modernity, and restrained luxury. As Lang has been part of Vaccarello’s inspiration as both a designer and an ethically conscientious person, the admiration is evident. This collaborative move is similar to Langs’ when he partnered with artists like Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer, as a designer in the ’90s. Thus, it seemed natural for the designer to turn to art full-time in 2005.
Vaccarello and Lang share many ideologies, including contemporary issues like sustainability, durability, lasting power of the ever-shifting nature of fashion collections, and cycles. Vaccarello has found the perfect interlocutor for a project that is also a dialogue. At the forefront of this conversation is ingenuity, as the artist takes past fashion objects and breathes new life into them, reinventing them through his work. The work holds a mirror to the fashion industry, demanding recognition of fashion as a form of applied art. In his creation, Lang questions the very definition of luxury and the meaning of the clothes’ function.
Vaccarello invited him to work with past collections he made for Saint Laurent, thus contributing to the transmutation of his creations for the house into another form of art. Resources include clothing, accessory prototypes, garments and jewels left unfinished and deserted; remaining testimonies of Vaccarello’s creativity has been morphed into a new life. Shredded, mixed with a pigmented resin then molded in aluminum, these former fashion objects will become primal totems with unique textures reminiscing both a precious past and a promising future.
The sculptures will be displayed at Rive Droite, first in Paris, then in Los Angeles, and available for sale.
