At Saint Laurent, the looped knot commands pride of place

If the camellia is the “eternal symbol” of Chanel, as Karl Lagerfeld called it, the pussy bow holds the same status Saint Laurent. And it couldn’t get any clearer than at the maison’s spring/summer show, staged in front of Paris’s own eternal symbol: the Tour Eiffel. To be sure, Coco Chanel, too, used pussy bows, but it was Yves Saint Laurent who popularised them by incorporating a version into his groundbreaking ‘Le Smoking” tuxedo suit for women in 1967, providing a soft, feminine contrast to the sharply masculine tailoring. And Anthony Vacarello has now gone quite batty over bows, sending massive ones down the runway, but rather than the traditional lavallière (named after Duchess of La Vallière, King Louis XIV’s mistress, who wore it often), those seen at the show had a single knotted loop, but with two ends. A unilateral anomaly.

There were ‘fierce’ bows on white shirts. They did not hang shyly down the neck, rather they were soft but crisp sculptures—possibly starched—that commanded attention on the chest and, in some cases, at the waist, their single looped upper the width of the shoulder, passing off as some giant wishbone. There were soft bows, too—cinches tied at the waist and ‘belted’ band collars with a tail left hanging like, well, a bow’s. The asymmetric lavallières, combined with the signature exaggerated shoulders that Mr Vaccarello favors, reinforced the theme of strong, almost aggressive, feminine elegance, aligning with the brand’s heritage of dressing powerful women or those who like projecting power. He has used bows in past collections, but these are now the very oxygen of the collection.

If the bow was a defiant, exaggerated expression of femininity, Mr. Vaccarello’s strong shoulders represented an inflated, architectural masculine power. This time, he did not put out pointy and hyperbolic shoulders that he had before, but rather the rounded, but no less commanding shoulders that, in some looks, including blouses, were augmented with massively puffed shoulders (another Saint Laurent ‘code’) to accentuate the deltoids. This, he has achieved without sending out a single blazer! The “power shoulder”, as it has been called, is the foundation of much of the Saint Laurent silhouettes of the ’80s. Mr Vacarello has said: “Everything starts with the shoulder.” To him, it isn’t about an oversized trend, but about a defined silhouette that gives the wearer ‘power’. It is, in hindsight, not a trend, but a deliberate architectural component that, even when softened, serves a singular purpose: authority, slyly tailored.

Mr Vacarello ended the last of essentially three segments of the show with another homage, now to ruffles. The final 15 looks used them, as Mr Saint Laurent did, to create a sense of dramatic, maximalist, evening wear, reminiscent of the house in the ’80s, only now the gowns were more voluminous, more ruffled, more dioramic. Engineered with Watteau pleats at the nape, the dresses gained massive volume, tenting and floating with considerable drama as the models strode. And the unevening colours: ground spice and dried fruit. What emerged as mere evocation achieved remarkable sublimation. Anthony Vacarello has truly remained in a protracted, respectful homage mode. This commitment is remarkable, given the current compulsion to remake a house almost completely. He is probably one of the few designers at luxury maisons still respectful of house codes. That fidelity alone commands admiration.