Screw quiet luxury, I'm here for ram it down your throat decadence

I'm currently re-reading Alicia Drake's The Beautiful Fall, and it's making me itch for a dose of good old fashioned glamour. You deserve some too!

I first read Alicia Drake’s 2007 non fiction book The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris back when I was a fledgling art student and I was hungry for a world bigger than the fairy light and angst-strewn box room I inhabited in a house share in Leeds.

The fizzing tale of decadence in the incestuously intertwined lives and loves of Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld ran through me like Coke Zero on a hangover and I couldn’t put it down. The glamour of an era which seemed so distant from my own was - in combination with 2009 documentary The September Issue - part of the reason I chose to pursue a career in magazines.

I picked up the book again last week - perhaps because I was feeling subconsciously bored by the current move toward restraint and so-called “quiet luxury” - and I haven’t been able to put it down since. Not only is it excellently written, Drake’s restrained prose balancing smartly against the drama of her subject matter, but it’s also inspired me to think bigger; about life and its manifold possibilities (Yves Saint Laurent was just 31 when he became the - to coin Drake’s phrase- “King Supreme” of Parisian fashion), and - arguably more importantly - about the clothes I choose to wear day in, day out.

It’s no secret that the pandemic elicited in us all a certain shrinkage. We saw fewer people, we retreated from the world - by order of the law - and we turned wearing schlumpy, lumpy, comfy clothes into a trend. There’s a reason, after all, that LVMH chose to invest in Birkenstock - the Teutonic overlord of comfortable footwear - directly after the laziest period in our recent history.

Drake’s book, with its lavish descriptions of the fabulous clothes created by Saint Laurent and Lagerfeld, but also the clothes worn by their groupies and acolytes - Jacques de Bascher, Antonio Lopez and Corey Tipin to name a few - has inspired me to entirely rethink my wardrobe. From this newsletter on I’m going to eschew restraint and ultimately embrace a bit of much needed glamour in my life.

Because quiet luxury is to fashion what Pierre Berge was to the House of Saint Laurent - a dependable stalwart which provides a necessary backdrop to the drama, but should remain firmly in the shadows (be sure to read the book if you need a refresher on Berge). We can all afford to be a little more Saint Laurent-cum-Lagerfeld in the way we’re dressing, in my opinion. And that doesn’t mean being flash, or logo-tastic, no no. Rather playful and dramatic and louche.

To help both you and I get started on our shared journey into noisy elegance, here are the six key style lessons I learned from the book. Rest assured I will be applying to my own wardrobe, immediatement.

1 | Don’t be afraid to accessorise

In her book Drake describes Lagerfeld’s Dorian Gray-esque muse and lover Jacques de Bascher as wearing “a silk smoking jacket with shawl collar, which was tied loosely at the waist and worn with pyjama trousers […] at his throat was a boisterously large black bow-tie, which he wore with a wing-collared dress shirt.” Drake also describes de Bascher and Lagerfeld as regularly sporting matching bejewelled lapel pins and she waxes lyrical about the former’s way with neckerchiefs. If the clothes are the cake of your look, your accessories are the icing, the cherries on top and the jam inside. More is more!

2 | Kaftans, always kaftans

There’s a picture of Yves Saint Laurent in the glossy mid-section of The Beautiful Fall wearing a white kaftan in Marrakech whilst reclined on a picnic blanket. Drake also states: “in the heat and smoke of Marrakech, Yves’ inhibitions peeled away. He wore paisley shirts unbuttoned against tanned skin faded jeans, crystals tied around his neck. “ As Europe sizzles in a heatwave and many of us head for fairer shores, it would be worth making like Yves and packing a kaftan or two. Not only are they chic, but they’re comfortable - two words which, one imagines, didn’t often sit in close accord in Saint Laurent’s vocabulary. Take the chance to pair them while you can!

3 | Invest in good trousers

Yves Saint Laurent was a master at cutting sexy, form-enhancing trousers - as evidenced by the rise of Le Smoking under his tutelage, and the following passage from Drake’s book: “when you wore trousers by Saint Laurent, they made you sit differently, light a cigarette differently.” Says Maxime de la Falaise. “You did it with the confidence of a man.” Elsewhere, Drake writes, “he made trousers that could convey power and chic.”

The lesson? It pays to invest in your bottom half. I speak from experience when I say that it can be all too easy to consider your trousers last in the process of pulling together an outfit - they’re pretty dull looking when not on a body and shoes are much more fun to buy. But if your trousers are tailored properly - high at the waist, with a perfect line, down to an elegant break - you will look taller, slimmer and better.

4 | Embrace COLOUR

Quiet luxury does not like colour. Quiet luxury lies comatose beneath layers of oatmeal cashmere and mousey vicuna, praying (quietly) for death. Fight the good fight for Life with a capital “L”, therefore, by wearing more colour! Describing Saint Laurent’s acclaimed 1976 Opera collection, Drake writes. “His use of colour was original and above all, painterly. […] “He had imagined daring and extravagant combinations, so that a dress bodice was in black velvet, the sleeves in tomato-orange satin and the skirt in pale, duck egg blue satin edged with red.” The key to getting colour right is to find bold colours which work well together, and to be brave in your pairings - pink and red! Yellow and navy! Purple and mint! The Farrow and Ball colour matching facility can actually be surprisingly helpful if you find yourself stuck.

5 | And more importantly, embrace BEAUTY

One thing that struck me about Drake’s book is that the key players tended not to wear “outfits”, but rather an amalgam of beautifully constructed individual pieces - each item valuable and sublime in its own right. “There was an overpowering beauty to the clothes.” Writes Drake. “Gold lamé boots, Cossack fur hats, capes of jade satin that looked as if they had been ripped from the curtain rails of a winter palace, glittering turbans and jewelled head-dresses and hips wrapped in black silk velvet” There’s a lesson to be learned here, I think. Invest only in pieces which are entirely beautiful when considered in isolation (that also applies to trousers) and invariably an excellent outfit will follow.

6 | Get the fabrics right first

Beautifully designed clothes are made as much by the quality of cut and colour, as they are by that of the fabric. Life is too short to wear aeons of planet-choking polyblends, so instead buy fewer pieces but ensure that they’re cut from fabulous silks, crepe de chines, grain de poudres, cashmeres, velvets and the finest cottons. Use this paragraph from Drake’s book for inspiration, should you find yourself in need. “[Andre] Leon Talley was besotted by Karl and Jacques’ European glamour; the silk pyjamas with embroidered initials on the breast pocket […] and Karl’s parting gift to André, of two silk crepe de Chine shirts. ‘Karl Lagerfeld, the genius who pours silk over the body with the same distinction as he poured his new fragrance.’ eulogised Talley.”

Basically, wear more silk.