Valerie Hermann

>> For the better part of a year now, Stefano Pilati's standing at Yves Saint Laurent has been under intense scrutiny. After reports circulated that he had renewed his contract at the house for three more years in October, the rumors of his imminent departure subsided — until Saint Laurent CEO Valerie Hermann, who with Pilati restored the house to profitability, announced last week she was stepping down to become CEO of Reed Krakoff on April 1. She helped recruit her successor at YSL, former Lanvin CEO Paul Deneve.

Then, a couple of days ago, someone tweeted under Kenzo's PR handle: "Just heard BIG news about this being a certain designer at an established French house's last season and being replaced by someone major!!" and "CEO has just left and now the designer replaced by someone who has moved away from design the last couple of yrs but stayed in fashion." The tweets — which seem to point to Pilati as the deposed and Hedi Slimane as the successor — have since been taken down (Note that YSL is under the PPR umbrella, whereas Kenzo is part of LVMH).

Now, Hint is reporting that according to sources, Hermann didn't leave her post last week, but rather was let go because of low sales volume. And Slimane — who designed for Saint Laurent before Dior Homme — has been chosen as Pilati's replacement, partially due to his friendship (read: ability to get along) with Pierre Berge. Word is, one way or another, the matter will be addressed by a spokesperson around Paris Fashion Week.

And in the aftermath? There's already been suggestions that Carine Roitfeld with consult for Slimane at the brand, and of course, there's the rumor that Pilati is set to take over at Giorgio Armani after the designer's retirement.

>> Stefano Pilati has an appreciation for things like Pee-Wee Herman, Glee, Rihanna, and LCD Soundsystem (which now provides music for Yves Saint Laurent's shows), but he also knows how to get serious. Yves Saint Laurent's sales have gone from nearly $100 million in losses to a profit, he tells W's February 2011 issue — not that it's been easy.

Because the label's founder so transcended fashion, Pilati says, he feels obliged to design to a higher standard — creating collections to build a woman's wardrobe over time rather than capturing a moment. His debut Yves Saint Laurent collection, he explains, “was the first time in my career that I didn’t think about a theme, when I started to think about something that could be timeless. I said to myself, You need to be relevant to a different level now. You can’t be only ‘I like red, and clogs instead of moccasins.’”

Working at Yves Saint Laurent has also made Pilati think about more than just the clothes he wants to create. "I’m not a businessman,” he says, “but I’ve become one by necessity.” It's routine for fashion brands to give accessories prime real estate in their ad campaigns — because handbags and shoes account for such a large percentage of their businesses. But Inez van Lamsweerde, who photographs Pilati's YSL ads every season with her husband, Vinoodh Matadin, says: “In the beginning, we almost had to beg him to put a bag in the picture. He said, ‘No, with this dress, you would not wear a bag — that’s not chic; that’s not how it works.’” Pilati has learned since — the latest Saint Laurent ads show Arizona Muse, bag in plain view.

When Pilati is asked whether he wishes he had a business partner counterpart like Pierre Berge to take all the commercial aspects off his hands, he replies: “It would be fantastic to be purely creative. Still, you want to walk in the street and see people wearing your clothes, and to do that you have to direct your creativity. So you already fulfill a part of what we think about as marketing from a commercial point of view. Giving the pantsuit to women — that was creative and instinctive, but it was also supported by the fact that women needed it, and, Berge or no Berge, Saint Laurent was the one who did it. The role of Berge, or today of the CEO, is to create a structure that can help your objective and sell the idea.”

There have been rumors about Pilati's standing at the company, but YSL CEO Valerie Hermann describes her relationship with Pilati as “a nice tension.” They have “constructive confrontations,” she says, but: “I’m learning from what he’s saying and listening with respect. What’s most important is that we always agree about where we want to go with the brand, and the confrontation is about how to get there.”

Pilati breaks his relationship with Hermann down as thus: "The roles are by nature split in the sense that the CEO has to respond to a group with numbers and performance and budget and business plans, while the creative director is almost at the service of the CEO. In those days, Saint Laurent was doing the tuxedo, and Berge helped him sell it. Now we live in a moment when we need to thank the CEO. I’m doing the bags, I’m doing the shoes, I’m doing the satin dresses, I’m doing the tuxedo, but if the performance of the brand is good, it’s because it has been managed well, and that includes managing the creative director.”

>> Paco Rabanne has slowly been edging back into the fashion game — first with handbags that hit stores next month, and then with clothing, which is promised soon after. The namesake designer, who has been consulting on the relaunch of Rabanne, recently said: "The Paco Rabanne brand is and must remain what it has always been: audacious." And now, it's rumored that Manish Arora may be tapped as the new creative director; though it's not confirmed, Aurora does have a knack for color and print. And speaking of designer rumors, there's also one going around that Haider Ackermann is being scouted to replace Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent — apparently YSL CEO Valerie Hermann attended Ackermann's Spring 2011 show in October incognito, without an offical ticket request or RSVP. [Racked, Racked]

>> Stefano Pilati's failure to appear at last night's Metropolitan Opera Gala, Yves Saint Laurent's biggest event of the year stateside, raised a few eyebrows, The Daily reports. For the last two years running, Pilati has showed at the event, usually with Anna Wintour by his side, but last night neither appeared.

Apparently during Paris Fashion Week, talk turned to Pilati's sales performance at the brand: top retailers reported that Yves Saint Laurent's accessories sell well (Pilati has a foundation in shoes and bags) but the ready-to-wear fails to resonate with customers. Rumors that PPR is searching for a new creative director at the brand ensued.

Reps deny any rift »

>> Stefano Pilati is certain about one thing — he doesn't think his predecessor at Yves Saint Laurent, Tom Ford, is gifted — and he wasn't alone.  When he went to work for Ford at YSL, "I was being tested by everybody at YSL . . . Even the receptionist. They all hated Tom, and they were all telling me about Mr. Saint Laurent and what he used to do." 

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!"

This is Stefano on drugs . . . »