Below: Another man with talent and looks...(love that stubble)
Below: There's a certain touch of softness to the otherwise masculine dress...such as the 'skirt' like wrapping of his cardigan and those 'tights':-P
An Ode To Stefano Pilati
A gifted man, a man who embodies style and class, embraces a certain nonchalant flair in mixing softness in man's dressing. An inspiration for all men who aspires to dress well, including me.
Found an article about Stefano, did not know he switched sexual preferences after playing many years in the heterosexual team:-P. Interesting to know a bit more background history of this handsome YSL crearive director whose work is breath-taking.
Lastly, I love the way he talks (Check out the youtube video below). He's humble and intellectual:-P I am impressed.
Stefano Pilati's Drug of Choice is Not Tom Ford
Fri, 08/29/08
But as for how Stefano thinks of himself — that's where things get a little less black-and-white. In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the designer tells Lynn Hirschberg he had interlocking male and female symbols tattooed on his arm at 13 — as an act of defiance. The now out designer lived for many years as a heterosexual, surprising women with his switch. "He always had girlfriends, and I thought Stefano was open to anything, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part," one said. He's even been known to try on his women's collection to check the garment. Once, Valerie Hermann, CEO of YSL, walked in on him in a petticoat: "I said, ‘Stefano, take that off!"
Perhaps the most personally debilitating blurring of lines Stefano committed was that of interchanging drugs with work — until he went through rehab twice because his creativity was affected, he worked on heroin: "It was integrated in my everyday life: in the morning, you take the drug, and then you go to work, and then again in the afternoon and evening. You can easily switch from the obsession of the drug to the obsession of the work."
He may play back and forth with gender, sexuality, work . . . but amongst all the confusion, one thing is for sure: Stefano Pilati is gifted.
Another interesting read as well:
Stefano Pilati Doesn’t Like Male Models or
Red-Carpet Stylists
09/02/08
Stefano Pilati Photo: Getty Images
Ford "seduced" Pilati to leave Prada for YSL, where everyone
hated Tom.
“Tom is a seducer … When I met him, I was under his spell. But I was amazingly scared to move to Paris and work for YSL. Prada was like a family, and it was a very female environment. Tom was surrounded by men, and he was like a fashion designer in a movie. We were naïve at Prada — we did things because we liked them, and they took off. Tom was much more calculated. I spent the first year trying to absorb his mentality. It was very difficult. Tom was mostly living in London, and I was being tested by everybody at YSL in Paris. Even the receptionist. They all hated Tom, and they were all telling me about Mr. Saint Laurent and what he used to do.”
There is a reason Pilati's Muse Two YSL bag looked nothing like his Muse One YSL bag.
“I do not get this naming of bags. Customers seem to like to ask for bags by name, but I don’t really like to name my bags — they are not children or pets.”
He doesn't feel the need to make red-carpet clothes because stylists ruin them.
“[T]he Oscars and all those events were ruined by the stylists. Mr. Saint Laurent would never have tolerated the stylists having this much power. Unfortunately, it does affect sales. If an actress wears your dress, customers will call the day after to get that dress. That one dress may give popularity to the brand, but is it popularity you look for? I’m not sure. I think I’d rather have loyalty.”
He doesn't like seeing male models on the runway.
“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. Whatever your sexuality, fashion is female … How beautiful is it to see the breast or the derrière moving on the street? We are all seduced by the blue of the sky and the red of the flower, why not the behind of a woman? It’s just a beautiful part of nature.”
He once sent one of his staffers to buy a pair of sandals off a man's feet on the streets of Paris.
“The guy wanted 500 euros. But we got them for 100. The sandals are from a tribe of Bedouins, and they are genius. Maybe they’ll inspire me, maybe not. One day, they might fit into a Moroccan moment. You can find greatness everywhere. You just have to look.”
He's been a fashionisto since he was 9 years old.
“I never had sneakers. My mother was pushing me to dress up, but from the ages of 8 or 9, I picked out my own clothes. I would change my clothes up to five times a day. To play, I had clogs. I had loafers to go to school. Lace-up shoes to go to Mass. This kind of discipline taught me a lot. To the point where I could then be more transgressive. I tried very early to break rules. I wanted to wear clothes from Fiorucci, that was the dream. My mother didn’t want that.”
His second rehab stint was at a facility for Vietnam vets.
“Can you believe it? I lived for one year with a T-shirt, a pair of jeans and nothing else. That was a shock from where I was coming from … In the end it was a privilege to spend a year on myself. I went to rehab because the drugs were starting to affect my creativity. I was in love with someone, and I thought it would be forever. But it wasn’t. Now, I never look back. I’m much more intrigued by lucidity than I was by my alteration.”
Being gay allows him to look at women objectively.
“I always wonder why 99 percent of the top male fashion designers are homosexual. In my case, I would say that my sexuality has led me to love women to death and to hate them as well … [Being gay] helped me understand the male mind. But when I do a fitting with a woman, I think, Would this woman seduce me?”
Naomi Campbell, the star of the fall YSL campaign, is like two people in one!
“Naomi represents the new world — in my mind, she is a mix of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”Article from nymag