Last March when I just came out of the Saint Laurent show I had two opinions, First,  Yves Saint Laurent must be wanting to come out of the death and slap Slimane, he has taken all the brands codes and broken them to make his own house of Saint Laurent, which has nothing to do with the old one.  Second I really did not like it, I thought he is crazy trying to address youngsters, punksters and who knows who else, definitely not the regular customer . Today, I think differently I see it as an amazing example of risking it all the way, thinking out of the box and finding a new authentic voice for a brand ( yes it is not anymore Yves, but Slimane) , I don’t say it is better or worse, I would say more adapted to the times. The house could not find a Raf Simmons like Dior to take the codes to the new century , so they decided  it to tear all it all down and re-invent.  It is too early to see if this will really succeed in the long term, but the moment is promising, the sales are “healthy” , the brand and his Artistic Director are all over the press, so the horizon looks bright, rock and hip.

On a more deep level, I really like this business case to take it to real life, sometimes you have to accept that the old, “what use to work” does not work anymore, you can’t “improve” it, you can’t put make up on it, you  have to “break it”, not in a mean way but in a resurrection kind of way, daring to revolutionize your old thoughts, beliefs and systems so be you can create a whole new perspective that might as well surpass the old, but you have to bold to do this. As risky as it may be it is better to advance boldly that to stay stuck for a long time J.

Be a Code Breaker

Love,

Yavidan