Saint Laurent's first campaign laid bare

By

Florent Gilles

Published
Sep 12, 2012

The photo is the first of a series of fifteen photographs by Slimane, as reported Monday in Women’s Wear Daily. The new head of the Parisian house has himself donned the camera to narrate the company's new chapter. "A tattoo and not one garment," some online publications were already grumbling after the release of this double-page ad for Vogue Hommes Japan on Monday, September 10. During the five years that Hedi Slimane spent far away from the runways, Condé Nast’s Vogue Hommes Japan often sought out his photographer's eye for major fashion shoots directed together with Nicola Formichetti, the magazine's fashion editor at the time and now creative director of Mugler. 


This visual teaser actually says more about its author than about the future direction of the house, which has not produced Saint Laurent menswear created by Hedi Slimane since 2000. The photo's model is musician Christopher Owens, former frontman of the California group the Girls. In fact, music is a source of inspiration and a key theme for photographer Hedi Slimane, together with America and youth. Other series photographs, some less elusive, can be viewed on Slimane's still actively updated blog, the Hedi Slimane Diary.


The future fashion designs of this expatriate in Los Angeles will first focus on the "Saint Laurent" woman, with the first runway show scheduled for October 1 in Paris – an event feverishly anticipated by many.