Talk YSL to Me Baby

A still, Michael Pitt in Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin’s Blow-Job. Courtesy of YSL.

“Cashmere traces the angle of your breast.  I want to hear the sound of six zippers. Clothes for you are a bunch of feathers. Underneath you’re stark naked….” Stephanie Cohen’s sultry French voice purrs like a saleswoman on Spanish fly to Michael Pitt, whose face fills the screen in a stylish remake of Andy Warhol’s film Blow Job by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. The film for YSL’s men’s collection opened Paris’s Fall/Winter 2009/2010 four-day runway marathon last night followed by a short show and fête held at the house’s old hotel particulier. Fresh from Milan, the international menswear contingent was hungry for the style spark that comes from Paris, a place where anything can happen. Stefano Pilati’s 21 models rushed into  the dark room as though tossed from a miner’s pit dressed for chic labor in charcoal grey and black cropped boy trousers and short, square round-shouldered zip jackets with badges, turtlenecks and lean cardigans worn through at the shoulders and just one concession to color: an Yves Klein blue coat.

“I haven’t had a runway show in three seasons so I wanted it to be cool,” explained Pilati afterwards. And the film? “The text is erotic, but it’s also fetish and about the clothes. I gave Inez and Vinoodh carte blanche because they’re part of my team and I wanted to participate in one of their films.” Charlotte Rampling, who says she only likes to wear “very masculine” clothes, was not disappointed. “I’d wear nearly everything,” she gushed. Rampling, who doesn’t turn up often at shows, admitted the YSL team had called her for weeks about this one. “I met Stefano at a party with Juergen Teller a while ago and it was such a funny evening so I said yes.” Rampling said she’d just finished filming Rio Sex Comedy, her second film, with young American director Jonathan Nossiter, which comes out late this year. I found Michael Pitt surrounded by  femme fatales (French TVs fashion maven Mademoiselle Agnès and model-cum-actress Joanna Preiss) at the upstairs after-party DJed by Michel Gaubert. When I tried to ask him a question he put one to me first. “Where’s the toilet here?” He asked before he disappeared, trailed by the ladies. It took a while before I found him again laughing in the corner with Pilati. “I’m working on a project with Scorsese for HBO,” said Pitt who added that the YSL film was  “a relaxing experience.  It made me feel like a carpenter.”