In his Spring/Summer 2011 collection, Stefano Pilati examines the signs and symbols by which individuals organize and identify themselves and their bodies in visual culture.

With respect and studied precision, the codes of Yves Saint Laurent are marked and recast, such that garments demonstrate both the influence of a heritage and Pilati’s decidedly contemporary vision. A manipulation of surfaces and shapes - via innovations in fabric and construction - and the consequent aesthetic gestures are proposed as anthropological evidence of a new tribe of modern women, a new tribe in fashion.

The purity of a trench or tailleur in structured cotton, its classicism cut literally through by incisions that expose the skin beneath. An eroticism given charge by movement and attitude. The iconographic jumpsuit claiming its origin. In thumb-printed mousseline, the trace of a personality, the power of a signature.

Colors inserted into dimensional ruffles and delivered in paysanne references in cotton silk toile flamme. Maribou feather embroideries, sculptural cotton jacquards and studded cotton piques index a tempered exoticism, the flair of the foreign. Evening like liquid appears in inky indigo and noir crepe de soir.

Stefano Pilati speaks with the loud silence of his garments, a vocabulary ever-centered around the inexorable chic of Yves Saint Laurent.

W: www.ysl.com