Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane links up with Yahoo Style for a rare interview, where he discusses his work for the French fashion house and what drives his signature rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic. Asked about his obsession with skinny youth, Slimane explains, “There is always a part of what you do that refers to your childhood, or youth. I was precisely just like any of these guys I photograph, or that walk my shows. Jackets were always a little too big for me. Many in high school, or in my family, were attempting to make me feel I was half a man because I was lean, and not an athletic build. They were bullying me for some time, so that I might feel uncomfortable with myself, insinuating skinny was ‘queer’. There was certainly something homophobic and derogative about those remarks. I was eating quite much, doing a lot of sport, but when I was 15, 16, or 17, that was simply the way I was built.”
Continuing on the subject of design inspirations, Slimane talks about the link to music. He shares, “There is that idea of androgyny, which is associated to my silhouette and design since the late ‘90s, and I presume a reflection of how I was, and how I looked growing up, the lack of gender definition. I could recognize it and feel a connection at the time with “The Thin White Duke“ character of Bowie. This is pretty much the origin of everything I did in design after that, a boy or a girl with the same silhouette.” Read more at Yahoo.com.
