recycled, rebirthed

Helmut Lang recycles old Saint Laurent for a new Rive Droite project
Fashion | 29 September 2020
Text Finn Blythe

For the latest chapter in Saint Laurent‘s Rive Droite project, Anthony Vaccarello has turned to none other than Helmut Lang for a sculptural, experimental collaboration that hints at the creative director’s expanded identity for the brand.

GALLERY

Since it was launched last year as a conceptual carte blanche, Rive Droit has served as the testing facility for this new direction, fusing music, photography, art, performances, exhibitions and events into a dynamic, fast-moving spectacle. By partnering with Lang, a fabled designer who practically wrote the book on collaborating with artists (see his projects with Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer), Vaccarello has tapped into the mind of a fellow innovator, whose philosophy of minimalism, modernity and restrained opulence resonates strongly with Saint Laurent’s current direction.

For their joint project, Lang has taken items from previous Vaccarello collections for Saint Laurent and re-moulded them in his own image. Clothing and accessory prototypes, garments and jewels left either unfinished or deserted have been shredded and mixed with a pigmented resin to form a composite kind of clay, with which Lang has sculpted a series of totem poles, each bearing the signs of a former life. The sculptures will be displayed at Rive Droite, first in Paris, then in Los Angeles and will be available for sale.


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