A Man Of Distinction.(Stefano Pilati)(Interview)

Byline: Photographed by Steven Klein

At Yves Saint Laurent, Stefano Pilati has become one of the most provocative designers this side of the twenty-first century. His talent, writes Sarah Mower, is just the beginning.

It is midnight in the YSL studio on the Avenue George V in Paris. There's an acre of cream carpet, a long table at one end, and a mirrored wall at the other. The space is locked in silence but packed. Sixteen personnel are watching Stefano Pilati scrutinize Kinga Rajzak, advancing toward him with the expressionless model-march of our times on needle-heeled patent sandals. This is look two in tomorrow's show: a navy A-line jacket with cap sleeves, a gray round-neck sweater, and ivory trousers. Pilati zeroes in on the pale millimeter between the girl's anklebone and pant cuff, makes her walk again. It is exact. Good. See you in the morning.

At this adrenaline-tense moment, I'm shoehorned onto the bench next to Pilati and his Japanese head pattern-cutter, strafing the room from my first vantage point on my two-month observation of one of the most complex designers to have risen to prominence since the turn of the millennium. And what's he up to now? Turning to plainness, tailoring, and pleated pants in a season when we've so far been looking at flowery, drifty prints. Making asymmetrically hemmed silk dresses that don't tag along with any trend I've seen. It's not the greatest time to interrupt--what with the countdown ticking, tailors and assistants on tenterhooks, and the Grand Palais show space still to be checked--but when I break the hush to ask what's going on with this collection, Pilati turns his full attention on me.

"It's the blazer as an icon, then the trainer, the sweatshirt," he says. "An athletic goddess!" I can see the military-blue jackets and chino-derived pants are a bold modernization of the Saint Laurent tailoring tradition, but the way Pilati has merged it with sport-derived jersey fabrics is something personal. "I was in Australia last summer," he tells me. "My coach got me into the Sydney Academy of Sport and Recreation, where they train and test rugby players. I went through the tests." "How'd you come out?" I whisper. "Excellent--I mean, for me," he hisses behind his hand. "I'm 42, and I came out average for age 25. I was pretty happy!" (This is a man who trains with rugby players and gets away with cravats.)

In one corner of the studio, I notice a mirrored Plexiglas breastplate composed of stars and military stripes, and it's puzzling me. At 1:00 A.M., as we jump into his black Lexus SUV and head off to inspect the Grand Palais, he tells me the stars are a motif Saint Laurent used in the late seventies, but it's an obscure part of the master's oeuvre, not an obvious pulling-in of the house codes. As Pilati has hit his stride, there is less and less of that. "I'm kind of on an emotional journey here," he says, looking out of the window. "I need to see how far I can go with my own image. I've listened to every word people have said to me about Saint Laurent, from people who have worked for him, women who have worn him, everyone. OK, I digest it! I don't feel I have to prove it's part of me. If there are affinities, that's good. But I need to breathe the air of a contemporary man."

In a few hours, Pilati must send out his seventh womenswear collection before an audience whose reactions, he well knows, can go either way. Love, hate. Split down the middle. Or, more accurately, in the strange pattern that's become specific to him, he might be in for an immediate drubbing, followed by an adulatory change of opinion and then the approval of the vox populi--if that's what you call the avid imitation of mass-market followers. That slow-burn, widespread validation is empowering, though. It ranks Pilati as one of the few who have changed fashion at a systemic level in the past few years. His first collection, spring 2005, designed after he succeeded his former boss, Tom Ford, was critically slaughtered ("Easter parade," mocked one voice). But look what happened afterward: Women adopted his wide belts, tulip skirts, and platforms, and continue to wear variations on them four years later. Pilati is the one who came up with tunics, and who made volumed raglan-sleeve coats desirable last winter. All over the world, women have taken his ideas to heart, even if they've never heard his name.