“It’s the Return of the Heiress, Babe”: Mel Ottenberg Reviews Saint Laurent FW25

Saint Laurent FW25

TUESDAY 11:26 PM MARCH 11, 2025 PARIS

My body is broken and I’m going on vacation tomorrow, but the Saint Laurent show was quite good. This show is really hitting on 1986, 1987 Yves Saint Laurent Fall-Winter shows, where he was doing bold color and proportion and silhouette. ThOSE collections were not very well-received, if I remember correctly, but I always thought they looked amazing.

That was when I started drawing fashion, actually. And then I wanted to be a fashion designer. And I think the drawings that I was doing really looked like this. Everything about the show today—the solid colors and the autumnal browns—really reminded me of what I first loved about fashion. I got a jolt of this youthful love for it. That was cool, but it also doesn’t look like old clothes, because it’s Anthony Vaccarello—he knows what he’s doing and it’s very not street. It’s very, very dressed-up lady, actually. I don’t even know where she’s going, but she looks good.

Pencil skirts are back, which is great. I don’t remember if we saw pencil skirts anywhere else, but we saw a lot of them here. And then there were these weird debutante gowns with leather jackets. I thought they were pretty great. One with sunglasses, one with a black leather jacket, one with a brown leather jacket. It’s the return of the heiress, babe. The colors, again, were very 80s Yves Saint Laurent. And I like seeing him playing with a new silhouette. There were also sling-backs and floral latex.

Jamie Rishar walked the show. Bella Hadid walked the show. I think it’s really good for girls to see that, sometimes, less is more. Bella walking only one show is so bitchy and cool. That was strong.

What else? I was sitting on this little poof and ot was a very Interview front row: Chloe Sevigny, Charli xcx,Hailey Bieber,  Zoe Kravitz, Austin Butler, then Aurel Schmidt. And I was like, “Damn! Look at you, Aurel.” They all looked good and it was good to see them.

I cannot believe Fashion Week is over because I thought it was never going to end and this would be the rest of my life. But it is over and that feels sort of sweet. Saint Laurent really brought the drama. It’s so amazing that this show is giving 1987 Yves Saint Laurent, since the stock market crashed and we might be in ruin. We’ve just been through 80 shows in three weeks, which is really wild. Whatever—sign of the times, right?

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