Chicago
Haute Couture Fall-Winter 1960, Souplesse, légèreté, vie collection
In July 1960 the young Yves Saint Laurent, who had been the Creative Director for the House since 1957, presented the Fall-Winter Souplesse, légèreté, vie collection in which black – one of Christian Dior’s favorite colors – was dominant.
Fur was treated in an unexpected way, particularly with the Chicago jacket, in which it bordered a black crocodile leather.
This way of using leather was unprecedented in Haute Couture and took its inspiration from the films The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which the young Marlon Brando for the former and James Dean for the latter really stood out. With their black leather jackets, they embodied a modern and free youth, to which Yves Saint Laurent, then aged 24, was also receptive.
He named the designs in his collection À bout de souffle (Breathless), after the film by Jean-Luc Godard, or Aimez-vous Brahms…, after the novel by Françoise Sagan. Both were his young contemporaries.
The journalist Eugenia Sheppard called this ensemble ‘chic beatnik look,’ as a reference to the Beat Generation, a literary movement which was in vogue in the United States and whose members also advocated a liberation of minds and morals.
Yves Saint Laurent, who was receptive to this discourse, translated this new trend into his collections, in an avant-garde move which proved too subversive for the House. This was his last collection at Dior.
© Laziz Hamani ; © Association Willy Maywald/ADAGP, Paris, 2022 ; © Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
