The Yves Saint Laurent Revolution: The Story of ‘Le Smoking’

Phang (Erased) joins up with fine artist Bachelier to take readers on a sunny ramble through fashion history. In a loose frame narrative, Yves Saint Laurent and his longtime friend and muse, Betty Catroux, wander the streets of New York City in the 1960s, looking for a restaurant that will admit Betty even though she’s wearing—quelle horreur!—trousers. Yves has just developed Le Smoking, his groundbreaking tuxedo suit for women, and makes grandiose pronouncements like “Pockets can be so powerful” and “A woman in black is a pencil stroke.” Cameos are aplenty, as Coco Chanel, Candy Darling, George Sand, and Andy Warhol join the pair to discuss the role of fashion in gender identity, politics, religion, law, warfare, and more. The narrative is primarily concerned with the ideas driving Saint Laurent, but dips occasionally into the material of a traditional biography, touching on his background and visiting his atelier. Bachelier switches up his art style to suit the subject and mood of each scene, often using loose, fine-lined drawings that suggest fashion design sketches. The characters saunter through collages of line art, color daubs, swaths of thick black brushwork, and photorealistic backgrounds varied with impressionistic scenes suggestive of mood boards. It’s a smart, unconventional portrait of an artist, with enough style to do its subject justice. (May)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misidentified the setting of the frame narrative.