The Saint Laurent Rive Droite Project Brings Together Anthony Vaccarello and Helmut Lang

Photos courtesy of the artist and Saint Laurent.

As part of the Saint Laurent Rive Droite project, Belgian fashion designer Anthony Vaccarello has given his creations to Austrian artist Helmut Lang to create a set of unique sculptures using raw materials. The sculpture exhibition will first be displayed at Rive Droite in Paris, and then in Los Angeles, and will be available for sale.

Vaccarello handpicked Lang for this partnership, which aids in expanding the identity of Saint Laurent. He’s always respected the Austrian artist, who first made a name for himself in the late 80s by inventing a new design language that embodied minimalism, modernity, and restrained opulence. He’s since joined forces with artists like Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer, which turned into a habit of collaboration. These joint efforts helped to establish fashion as a form of applied art. In 2010, the fashion world went into a frenzy when a fire destroyed Lang’s clothing archive. He then repurposed the fragments of material into sculptures.

The sculpture project involves modern concerns like sustainability and durability, along with the lasting power of the dynamic nature of fashion collections. Lang’s distinctive ability to turn items (either raw or discarded) into pieces of art made him the perfect partner for this endeavor. Shredded, mixed with a pigmented resin, and then molded in aluminum, these fashion artifacts will become primal totems with unique textures, both reminiscing on a precious past and anticipating a promising future.