(Left) Betty Catroux, (Right) Saint Laurent SS21 Patrick Lichfield / Conde Nast via Getty Images / Saint Laurent
Betty Catroux could never be an influencer in 2020. With an all black wardrobe of smoking suits, sunglasses and leather while donning the same haircut for over 50 years, she would lack the variety of style, bright colour palette and preachy partnership ads in her feed required to make it as an ‘Insta Girl’. However, there’s no denying that she has influenced the fashion industry massively. She pioneered androgyny, practically invented being too cool for school, and lives her life’s ambition; to do nothing.
(Left) Loulou de la Falaise, Yves Saint Laurent and Betty Catroux, (Right) Saint Laurent SS21 Evening Standard / Hulton Archive / Getty Images / Saint Laurent
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In her heady days of the late 60s and 70s on the arm of partner in crime Yves Saint Laurent, there wasn’t a party she wasn’t invited to, not a Saint Laurent piece she hadn’t inspired and was never without a glass of the finest wine. After the death of Saint Laurent in 2008, Catroux continued to inspire designers, especially those who’ve headed up the design team at the late designer’s luxury house and now, as Anthony Vaccarello presents his latest collections in an off-schedule fashion film, her essence is more current than ever; even in a dystopian wasteland where models walk down a YSL logo catwalk made of sand in an eerie desert.
(Left) Betty Catroux, (Right) Saint Laurent SS21 ARNAL / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images / Saint Laurent
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Perhaps what makes Catroux a continual source of inspiration is that, like Saint Laurent’s collections, she’s so nonchalantly sexy while maintaining a masculine indifference, as if to say ‘don’t text me back’, or to look as though you’ve just ghosted someone in impossibly cool fashion. It’s similar to the way Catroux has constantly made her disdain for the fashion industry loudly apparent while simultaneously inspiring the masses. Saint Laurent maintains an almost unattainably cool je ne sais quois while continuing to produce the most coveted items of the season, every time.
Saint Laurent SS21 Saint Laurent
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The SS21 collection itself carries out the house’s usual ultra-alluring tropes with oversized blazers, super-minis and gold embellishments at the forefront and Vaccarello’s now-synonymous texture-play remains an exciting indicator as to what materials we’ll be wearing in the new season. Last season he bought a new vision to vinyl, before that he revitalised velvet, but for SS21, a much more ‘wearable’ fabric is the direction of which he’s leading us.
Saint Laurent SS21 Saint Laurent
Taking the world’s current situation into account where many of us have stayed home in our not-so-chic’s, Vaccarello delved into the archives to bring back the pliable jersey of the late 1960s - again, a relic of Catroux’s era - and somehow made stretch-knit the new fabric du jour. Emblazoned across feather-trimmed bodysuits, belted safari suits and cycling shorts, it seems as though we’ll all be nuts for knit when we finally get out of lockdown.
Saint Laurent SS21 Saint Laurent
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It also goes without saying that it’s the perfect for party dressing. Equal parts sophisticated-chic and unapologetically outré with an undeniably sexy edge, the new cool-girl uniform has been officially reinstated.
See below Saint Laurent’s SS21 fashion film