RISING SON: Stefano Pilati is still feeling cinematic. To present his spring/summer men’s wear collection for Yves Saint Laurent in Paris Wednesday night, he plans to screen a short film by Samuel Benchetrit, a French film director, actor – and the dashing other half of actress Anna Mouglalis. The house is mum on the plot, but the protagonist is Benchetrit’s 11-year-old son, Jules (and the fashion news will not be the launch of a children’s wear line.) Pilati also plans to stage a mini fashion show after the screening at YSL’s Rue d’Artois showrooms. Last season, Pilati featured a film by photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin that featured actor Michael Pitt. (*original text ‘n pic from WWD)

Hypocrite or pretentious? It could be a good film, but some people’s initial responses at forum are quite negative already, and the show is not even done, it’s hard to change the 1st impression:

“not another F**** movie zzzzzz”

“Great…another heinously pretentious film for YSL Homme…”

“I’m sorry but the idea of having an 11-year-old boy in the presentation for Yves Saint Laurent is just completely and utterly ridiculous. Children in high fashion can only work when it has an ironic twist i.e. Marc Jacobs/Dakota Fanning. But for Yves Saint-Laurent? Michael Pitt and the Inez/Vinoodh made sense. But a child? It’s just bizzare and to be honest, pretentious on Pilati’s behalf.”

Then, what is this all about? The 11-year-old Jules Benchetrit? I honestly miss his old catwalk shows. Okay, let’s do a reality check. We welcomed the 1st time at AW08 (fea. Simon Woods), then the response for the second time (fea. Jack Huston, SS09) was already ambiguous. Came this season, people slaughtered the pretentiousness of the clip (fea. Michael Pitt, AW09), told him to stick to his day job. I had my blind love to the brand and praised the provocative notion of it. But, what is he trying to prove? Taking the house into 21th century requires lots more than making a film, which would no doubt draw a lot of attention and make big noise, especially when you use an 11 year old boy.

... Of course there was the Hedi Slimane interregnum, but – much as Pilati loves what he does- Slimane’s focus on youth made that direction untenable for him.”When you’re young, you eat and you spit it out so nothing remains, and I didn’t want to focus my energy on something like that. I wanted to focus it on someone who could feel it.”     - <Fantastic Man#3 SS06 issue>

He said it loud at The NY Times’s interview last year that ‘a well-dressed man is someone you want to share an evening with, have a conversation. You don’t want to see him on the catwalk,’ then he put on a presentation in January after previewing the Pitt’s film to press, which was in fact better that way, but again he did exactly what he dislikes. Plus, if I recalled, he literally had a cast full of Slimane-esque boys in FW09, let alone using Ash Stymest and George Barnett, both are faves of Slimane. Furthermore, I don’t even need to bring up his comments on black fitting model and how great Naomi Campbell is, whom to him- “like the combo of Obama and Hilary Clinton”. 

I find it strange and annoying that Pilati tends to do exactly what he dissed or disliked about as recorded in press, and worse still probably thinks he himself would do better, why?! I can’t wait to see what Suzy Menkes and Cathy Horyn say after the film.