Saint Laurent

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Terry Richardson photographed Gisele Bündchen for the November 2012 issue of Harper's Bazaar Brazil. The issue marks the magazine's one-year anniversary — which explains the celebratory balloons Bündchen is holding on the cover. [Made in Brazil]
  

• Hedi Slimane is keeping his photographic skills sharp now that he's designing Saint Laurent. He photographed models Georgia Hilmer and Sarah Engelland during fittings for his Spring 2013 show. [Style.com]
  

• Kenneth Cole will stage his runway comeback in February during New York Fashion Week. It will be his first show since Spring 2006. [WWD]
  

• Azzaro announced today that Mathilde Castello Branco, its creative director of less than a year, will leave the brand and that it "will shortly be announcing her successor." [Vogue UK]
  

• Oscar de la Renta, who's dressed first ladies from both political parties, is the subject of a retrospective that will go on display next month at the Clinton Presidential Library. André Leon Talley curated the exhibit, titled Oscar de la Renta: An American Icon. [Fashionista]
  

• Promos for the new model reality show The Face — starring Naomi Campbell, Coco Rocha, and Karolina Kurkova — reveal a glimpse of just how intense the competition will be once the show goes on air in February. [Modelinia]

Well, this took long enough. A year after Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Louboutin sued each other over a pair of red-soled shoes, YSL has filed a motion to dismiss its case against the French shoemaker.

The newest development comes just a month after a New York judge decided that Louboutin has the right to its trademark on red-soled shoes — except in the case of a shoe that's red all over. An all-red shoe with a red sole that YSL produced last year is what prompted Louboutin to sue YSL for trademark infringement last April. The ruling means that technically, both firms can claim victory in this case — and that's exactly what YSL's lawyer David Bernstein did today.

"Now that the Court of Appeals has definitively ruled for Yves Saint Laurent and has dismissed Christian Louboutin's claims, Yves Saint Laurent has decided to end what was left of the litigation and refocus its energies on its business and its creative designs," Bernstein said. "By dismissing the case now, Yves Saint Laurent also wishes to ensure that the Court will not make any further rulings that put at risk the ability of fashion designers to trademark color in appropriate cases."

Louboutin's lawyers may not agree with that interpretation of last month's ruling, but they were happy about it. Harley Levin, who represents the shoemaker, said, "The two key elements we sought answered were that color can be a trademark in the fashion industry and that our trademark is valid and enforceable — thank God."

Photo via Christian Louboutin.

Like any father figure would, PPR chief Francois Pinault defended Hedi Slimane against some of the less kind things critics have said about his debut collection for Saint Laurent. In the process, he also sent a thinly veiled zinger in the direction of Cathy Horyn, and may well have put an end to the war of words between the critic and the designer.

"Hedi Slimane did a remarkable job. I liked last Monday's fashion show very much — the Saint Laurent collection exceeded my expectations," Pinault said. "The house needed both a renovation and a return to its roots and, with Hedi, we have started down that road. I totally stand by the house of Yves Saint Laurent and the decisions made by its teams or its artistic director, and I didn't appreciate that some people tried to use me by linking my name to chatter about invitations or the seating of this or that person."

By "some people," Pinault may have meant Horyn, who wrote in her review of the collection that Pinault expressed dismay when he found out Horyn hadn't been invited to the show. The unfavorable review spurred Slimane to write an open letter posted to Twitter and other missives decrying Horyn as a "schoolyard bully and also a little bit of a comedian." Those tweets have now been deleted. One wonders, now that Pinault has gotten what effectively is the last word in this saga, whether he asked Slimane to put those barbs away in the first place?

From left: Salma Hayek, Francois Pinault, Kate Moss, Jamie Hince, and Vivienne Westwood front row at the Saint Laurent Spring 2013 show in Paris.

Hedi Slimane batted back against Cathy Horyn on Twitter once again Wednesday night, responding to her comment that his reaction to her critique of Saint Laurent's Spring 2013 show was "silly nonsense."

"The perfect integrity of The NewYork Times, and its writers, is not precisely 'just silly nonsense,'" Slimane tweeted. He continued, "What is a 'silly nonsense' to me is Catty [sic] Horyn still singing her tired bias tune for the nyt. This is an embarrassment for the newspaper."

The volleys started Monday, when Horyn wrote a post about Slimane's debut show for Saint Laurent (to which she wasn't invited), calling it "a nice but frozen vision of a bohemian chick at the Chateau Marmont. . . . Mr. Slimane's clothes lacked a new fashion spirit."

Slimane responded with an open letter Tuesday, calling Horyn "a schoolyard bully and also a little bit of a stand-up comedian." The letter continued to say that she would never be invited to a Saint Laurent show. Horyn told WWD on Wednesday that the war of words was "just silly nonsense to me."

Photo courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent.

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Remember the hula hoop bag from Chanel's Spring 2013 show? "It's for the beach," Karl Lagerfeld says. "You need space for the beach towel, huh? And then you can put it into the sand and hang things on it, and things like that." [Styleite]
  

• Alexa Chung is writing a book that will be released in September 2013. We wonder if it'll debut during Fashion Week? [Vogue UK]
  

• Cathy Horyn has responded to an open letter from Hedi Slimane, in which the designer called her a "schoolyard bully" for her critique of his debut at Saint Laurent. "It's just silly nonsense to me," she says. [WWD]
  

• Fashion Week founder Fern Mallis got her first job in the industry by winning a contest at Mademoiselle magazine. "I was the guest editor. I won that contest, and that really started the whole ball rolling," she said. [Teen Vogue]
  

• Victoria's Secret has asked Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Bruno Mars to perform at the 2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. [Jezebel]

Hedi Slimane has added his name to the short list of designers to respond publicly to Cathy Horyn's criticism of their work this season.

Slimane, who showed his Spring 2013 collection for Saint Laurent in Paris on Monday night, tweeted a message titled "My Own Times." The text read in part:

"Miss Horyn is a schoolyard bully and also a little bit of a stand-up comedian. Insiders argue she is an average writer, and a bit provincial, but I disagree, she did some great things. Her biggest achievement so far is a book about Bill Blass, that I haven't read. It might be terrific, and I'll be happy to recommend it, if it helps the sales. . . As far as I'm concerned, she will never get a seat at Saint Laurent, but might get two for one at Dior. She should rejoice. I don't mind critics, but they have to come from a fashion critic, not a publicist in disguise. I am quite mesmerized she did get away with it for so many years."

Horyn was not invited to the Saint Laurent show on Sunday and pointed that out in a post about the collection. She explained her exclusion thus:

"Despite positive reviews of his early YSL and Dior collections, as well as a profile, Mr. Slimane objected bitterly to a review I wrote in 2004 — not about him but Raf Simons. Essentially I wrote that without Mr. Simons's template of slim tailoring and street casting, there would not have been a Hedi Slimane — just as there would never have been a Raf Simons without Helmut Lang. Fashion develops a bit like a genetic line."

Oscar de la Renta took out a full-page ad in WWD to respond to Horyn calling him a "hot dog" in her critique of his Spring 2013 show. In it, the designer asked Horyn, "If you have the right to call me a hot dog why do I not have the right to call you a stale 3-day old hamburger?" Horyn later told us that she was trying to compliment de la Renta "as someone showing off his tricks, like a surfer."

A look at the full text of Slimane's tweet, below.