Curations: Saint Laurent allows Helmut Lang to shred its creations for the sake of art and environment
- Iconic fashion designer-turned-artist Lang transformed surplus clothes and accessories from past seasons into sculptures
- The pieces are being displayed at Saint Laurent Rive Droite, the French label’s experimental boutique that blends art with fashion
It’s a fashion addict’s worst nightmare: sending precious garments from a storied label to the shredder. But that’s exactly what Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello did.
The Belgian designer handed over his intricate prototypes, accessories and unfinished pieces from past seasons to Helmut Lang, the legendary fashion designer-turned-artist, who transformed them into a series of striking, totem-like sculptures.
The artworks went on display at Saint Laurent Rive Droite, the French brand’s experimental boutique in Paris that features art and performance pieces alongside the maison’s latest fashions. The exhibition, “Helmut Lang x Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent Rive Droite,” will soon travel to Los Angeles to be shown at the Beverly Hills outpost of the boutique. The pieces will also be made available for sale.
The collaboration between this pair of creative minds was born about two years ago after Vaccarello visited Lang on Long Island, New York, where he lives and works. Vaccarello has long cited the Austrian designer as a major source of inspiration.
Lang first made a name for himself in the 1980s with his austere, pared-back designs. Often considered the driving force of minimalism in fashion, his work continues to have an impact today. Lang also forged a strong link between the fashion and art worlds over the years, collaborating regularly with contemporary artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer.
In 2005, Lang walked away from his eponymous label to pursue a new career as an artist. Five years later, a fire broke out in his Manhattan studio, destroying a large portion of his fashion archive. The fashion world was shocked, but Lang had an epiphany that led to a bold move – he shredded thousands of remaining pieces that had survived the fire to be used as raw materials to create art.
Lang incorporated the shredded fabric into densely textured, pillar-shaped sculptures. The material was mixed with paint and resin, then poured into long aluminium tubes to be moulded into shape.
For the art collaboration with Saint Laurent, he used a similar technique with the fragments of fabric and accessories from Vaccarello’s past collections. The end result is a series of tall, slender metallic sculptures that look like charred tree trunks from afar. But if you look closely, traces of the original designs – a gleaming YSL logo, or bits of jewellery and hardware – can be spotted within the thick coating of pigmented resin.
This series of dramatic sculptures debuted at a time when the fashion industry is taking stock of its carbon footprint and other environmental impacts. One issue faced by many brands is overproduction, which results in excess stock once a new fashion season begins.
Meanwhile, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vaccarello decided to take a more thoughtful approach with Saint Laurent, starting with stepping away from this year’s fast-paced schedule of fashion shows. Instead, he plans to present collections on his own terms and timeline – a move which emphasises creativity over production and also helps to move the brand in a more eco-conscious direction.
By recycling the label’s surplus goods to create art, the sculptures displayed at Saint Laurent Rive Droite can connect with the growing numbers of people who are searching for meaningful, socially conscious fashion. The collaboration is also a testament to Vaccarello’s influence as a fashion visionary. As Yves Saint Laurent once said: “Fashion is not quite an art, but requires an artist in order to exist.”