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"He brought the house of Saint Laurent back to its roots." Far be it for me, a fashion consumer, to question the edicts of fashion's gatekeepers but that's not exactly what I saw when I looked at Slimane's Saint Laurent. Moreover, can we really call what he did for Saint Laurent "designing" when it seems like virtually every single look he sent down the runway for Spring/Summer 2016 could just as easily have been pulled from Courtney Love's closet circa 1990's? Personally, when I think of what Saint Laurent (the man, not the brand) contributed to fashion, I think of a designer who broke with tradition by introducing pret-a-porter because he believed it was more in keeping with how modern women wanted to consume fashion. By contrast, when I think of Slimane for Saint Laurent, I can't help thinking of the The Emperor's New Clothes.

To anyone who observes the luxury industry even casually, it's fairly clear that while many brands talk a good game about innovation and risk-taking, a lot of it is just that, talk. To anyone who observes the luxury industry even casually, it's fairly clear that while many brands talk a good game about innovation and risk-taking, a lot of it is just that, talk. When I learned that the venerable house of Ruinart would be collaborating with contemporary Dutch artist Erwin Olaf, my ears perked up. While Ruinart, France's oldest champagne house and arguably it's most prestigious, does have a long record of artistic collaborations dating back to 1896, there is a world of difference between an association with say, The Royal Opera in London and a contemporary artist well-versed in the art of provocation.

I must admit, I was curious about the Ai Weiwei installation at Paris' Le Bon Marche I must admit, I was curious about the Ai Weiwei installation at Paris' Le Bon Marche The smaller installations in the store windows facing the street have an autobiographical element to them and reference Ai Weiwei's well-publicized political struggles with his government over surveillance and censorship. Then again, I personally don't think art belongs exclusively between the sterile white walls of museums.

Last April, I wrote a post on racial diversity in the fashion industry in which I suggested that progress on this front seemed to be more forthcoming from brand adverts and e-commerce sites like Net-A-Porter than mainstream fashion editorials in magazines like Vogue. Last April, I wrote a post on racial diversity in the fashion industry in which I suggested that progress on this front seemed to be more forthcoming from brand adverts and e-commerce sites like Net-A-Porter than mainstream fashion editorials in magazines like Vogue. In that post, I sited as examples Liya Kebede for the Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2015 campaign and editorial content produced on Net-A-Porter's "The Edit". While there is a context to the campaign which might account for the presence of a model of color (Lagerfeld shot it on location in Brooklyn presumably to give it an urban feel), it wasn't so long ago that context would have been overlooked in favor of a willowy white model all the same.