Pierre Berge

>> Stefano Pilati has an appreciation for things like Pee-Wee Herman, Glee, Rihanna, and LCD Soundsystem (which now provides music for Yves Saint Laurent's shows), but he also knows how to get serious. Yves Saint Laurent's sales have gone from nearly $100 million in losses to a profit, he tells W's February 2011 issue — not that it's been easy.

Because the label's founder so transcended fashion, Pilati says, he feels obliged to design to a higher standard — creating collections to build a woman's wardrobe over time rather than capturing a moment. His debut Yves Saint Laurent collection, he explains, “was the first time in my career that I didn’t think about a theme, when I started to think about something that could be timeless. I said to myself, You need to be relevant to a different level now. You can’t be only ‘I like red, and clogs instead of moccasins.’”

Working at Yves Saint Laurent has also made Pilati think about more than just the clothes he wants to create. "I’m not a businessman,” he says, “but I’ve become one by necessity.” It's routine for fashion brands to give accessories prime real estate in their ad campaigns — because handbags and shoes account for such a large percentage of their businesses. But Inez van Lamsweerde, who photographs Pilati's YSL ads every season with her husband, Vinoodh Matadin, says: “In the beginning, we almost had to beg him to put a bag in the picture. He said, ‘No, with this dress, you would not wear a bag — that’s not chic; that’s not how it works.’” Pilati has learned since — the latest Saint Laurent ads show Arizona Muse, bag in plain view.

When Pilati is asked whether he wishes he had a business partner counterpart like Pierre Berge to take all the commercial aspects off his hands, he replies: “It would be fantastic to be purely creative. Still, you want to walk in the street and see people wearing your clothes, and to do that you have to direct your creativity. So you already fulfill a part of what we think about as marketing from a commercial point of view. Giving the pantsuit to women — that was creative and instinctive, but it was also supported by the fact that women needed it, and, Berge or no Berge, Saint Laurent was the one who did it. The role of Berge, or today of the CEO, is to create a structure that can help your objective and sell the idea.”

There have been rumors about Pilati's standing at the company, but YSL CEO Valerie Hermann describes her relationship with Pilati as “a nice tension.” They have “constructive confrontations,” she says, but: “I’m learning from what he’s saying and listening with respect. What’s most important is that we always agree about where we want to go with the brand, and the confrontation is about how to get there.”

Pilati breaks his relationship with Hermann down as thus: "The roles are by nature split in the sense that the CEO has to respond to a group with numbers and performance and budget and business plans, while the creative director is almost at the service of the CEO. In those days, Saint Laurent was doing the tuxedo, and Berge helped him sell it. Now we live in a moment when we need to thank the CEO. I’m doing the bags, I’m doing the shoes, I’m doing the satin dresses, I’m doing the tuxedo, but if the performance of the brand is good, it’s because it has been managed well, and that includes managing the creative director.”

>> In response to the rumors of Stefano Pilati's tenuous footing at Yves Saint Laurent, more rumors: Balmain's Christophe Decarnin, former Saint Laurent men's designer Hedi Slimane, and Raf Simons were all reportedly approached for the job, but nonetheless, Pilati is said to have recently extended his contract for another three years. Word is, Hint reports: "Pierre Bergé has no interest in seeing the YSL brand continue. He'd rather see it killed and the legacy remain untouchable, observed only from afar through exhibitions, films, auctions, etc. As his foundation still controls the YSL archives, he can and does make life difficult for whomever wants a closer look at the house's DNA," which may have contributed to the potential replacements turning Pilati's position down. There's also speculation that Karl Lagerfeld plans to retire on his 30th anniversary at Chanel in 2012 — "it's thought he'll stage a massive, never-before-seen, no-expense-spared farewell" — leaving Alber Elbaz to take his place and Olivier Theyskens to take the reins at Lanvin. [Hint]

>> Yves Saint Laurent's Paris Apartment Put Up for Sale —After much of Yves Saint Laurent's private art collection has been auctioned in the past couple of years since his death, Pierre Berge put the designer's Left Bank apartment up for sale this week. Saint Laurent and Berge first moved into the apartment on the rue de Babylone in 1970 and bought it eight years later. The asking price for the 11-room duplex, which covers 5,600 square feet with a 4,700 square foot garden, is €23.5 million (approx. $31.4 million). [NY Times]

>> During the Spring 2010 season, Loic Prigent, director of documentaries Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, Signe Chanel, and The Day Before, and French TV personality Mademoiselle Agnes teamed up to film Habillees, chronicling the search for the next French design talent. The Sundance Channel uploaded the six Habillees webisodes this week, and the hour's worth of content features everyone from John Galliano taking his runway bow to Karl Lagerfeld waltzing to Nicholas Ghesquiere saying of his work: "Wearing Balenciaga is a choice. These clothes aren't easy to wear. They're not meant to be easy to wear."

When Pierre Berge, former partner of Yves Saint Laurent and president of ANDAM, which annually bestows 160,000 euros to designers under 40 seeking to expand their businesses in France — most recently awarded were Giles Deacon for 2009 and Gareth Pugh for 2008 — was asked by Mademoiselle Agnes who the next big French talent is, he replied: "No one."

But perhaps best of all are the scenes with Anna Wintour, who is shown exiting the Rochas show flanked by two bodyguards, one who brusquely nudges a woman out of the way.  Just after, as Anna descends a set of stairs, the other bodyguard turns a flashlight on her feet so she can walk without fear of tripping in her heels.  Later, Agnes catches up with Anna before the Balmain show to ask her how important she thinks it is to support young designers. Notice the subtle dig at Carine Roitfeld in Anna's response:

I think it's totally important for all of us in the American fashion industry to support the young designers, and I think that's why New York's become such a vibrant fashion center, because people go there not only to see the Donna Karans of the world but a whole new generation. I'm just so sorry that there isn't something like that in Paris that's similar. I think that they should look for the younger generation here [in Paris] as well. Not only New York but London really supports their young talent; Franca Sozzani at Italian Vogue supports the young Italian designers, and I think when France is so known for its fashion industry — for them not to be reaching out to help younger people today is really a shame. [Agnes: "And there's space in your pages for them."] There's space in everybody's pages.

The videos! (The Anna Wintour bit is in Part 5) »

>> The relationship between Yves Saint Laurent, his business partner Pierre Berge, and his ready-to-wear successor Tom Ford was clearly a strained one.  In 2004 as Ford was leaving the label, Saint Laurent said of Ford: "I think he has a lot of talent for, what do you call it, marketing. But he never showed interest in the archives."  In between tales of his first sexual escapades and how he snuck his longtime partner Richard Buckley into A Single Man, Ford returns the favor in the December 2009-January 2010 issue of The Advocate:

“I don’t even remember much about my time at Yves Saint Laurent, though I do think some of my best collections were [there]—other than that black-and-white initial one. That one wasn’t very successful and wasn’t very good. But being at Yves Saint Laurent was such a negative experience for me even though the business boomed while I was there. Yves and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were so difficult and so evil and made my life such misery.

"Pierre and Yves were just evil" »

>> INSIDER WIRE —Are designer musicals are the new designer documentary? Former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren has been working on bringing Christian Dior's life to Broadway for over a year now, and not to be outdone, French singer Alain Chamfort and songwriter Pierre-Dominique Burgaud are simultaneously working on a production of Yves Saint Laurent's rise to fame, from his early days at Dior on.  Lucky for them, they seem to have Pierre Berge's blessing — he said of the songs so far, "They are very good.  They are moving." [WWD]
*image: source

Opening Ceremony, Steven Alan, Shipley & Halmos, and Gilded Age will all produce Spring 2009 capsule collections for Uniqlo...

Details emerge--including who wants to talk and who doesn't--on Karl Templer and Fabien Baron's departure from Interview magazine. 

Pierre Berge, former partner of Yves Saint Laurent, has some unkind words for Cavalli, Versace, and the fashion industry at large. 

Diane Von Furstenberg will design ten rooms at Claridge's; the five star art deco hotel located in the Mayfair district of London. 

>> INSIDER WIRE —To say art collection was a love affair for Yves Saint Laurent would be an understatement.  He amassed 800 some-odd lots that Christie's will be auctioning in February — with an estimated $400 million return — including two drama-inducing Qing-dynasty bronze heads (the Chinese government considers them stolen; YSL's partner Pierre Berge told them he would gladly return the imperial pieces to China for $60 million).  YSL and Berge amassed so much because they “decided in five minutes” and “never questioned the price of anything,” according to one dealer they worked with.  They got to the point where a Degas had to be hung next to the toilet.  But the collection was an obsession — before one of Yves's last runway shows, he came to a dealer in desperation: “He was in terrible shape. He could hardly speak.  Yves said, ‘I’m so stressed! I’m out of ideas! I need to see beautiful things!’ And he left with two gold boxes in his pocket. He absolutely needed them as a fix.”  A visual tour of the goods. [Vanity Fair]