An evening in with Stefano Pilati
An evening with Stefano Pilati is the dream of many red-blooded females (and males, for that matter) - and yesterday evening, several hundred of them packed into the London College of Fashion to hear Mr Pilati in conversation with the always-erudite Colin McDowell.
An insight into a designer's working practice is always a rare treat - particularly when said designer is both unquestionably one of the most influential figures on the international fashion stage and simultaneously entrusted with one of its most awesome legacies. This delicate balancing-act is one Pilati has to deal with each season, and last night demonstrated just how deftly Pilati has managed to respect the dictats of Saint Laurent while moving the YSL brand resolutely to the forefront of modern mores. Indeed, when McDowell opened the interview with talk of sex, it could have been the late Yves himself talking as Pilati declared "the seduction factor for me is the most important thing." In the next instant, however, Pilati was declaring fashion to be the last great artisan-form - tantamount to sacrilege from a designer picking up the mantle of arguably the greatest fashion 'artist' of all time, but at the same time a realistic assessment of a craft that still relies on hand-workmanship and interaction of cloth and body for its best effects.
Throughout the course of the evening, it was this genuine, unreserved love of his craft - and of making modern women look beautiful - shone through with Pilati's every declaration, whether this was his rather highbrow assertion of a woman in his clothes taking part in a dialogue between the designer and her body, or the more basic (and unreservedly humorous) question he asks of each collection: "Okay, does she look like a freak or not?" Indeed, the most striking element was just how resolutely down-to-earth - and indeed, sometimes quite candid - Pilati's views and observations were, particularly bearing in mind this is one of the most powerful men in fashion speaking, unedited and unrehearsed, in a public forum. What other designer would admit that his motivation to design after styling for Conde Nast in the mid-eighties was looking at an outfit and saying "I think I can do better than that!"
While such unsugared honesty is rare in fashion, what is rarer still is to come away so resolutely charmed by a designer - but "charming" indeed was the word that ricocheted around the auditorium following Pilati's all-too-early exit.