Angular, sharp, even vicious, Saint Laurent’s Amalia slingback heel remains one of the most elegant contradictions in fashion
One of the most striking things about the vision of Yves Saint Laurent was its entirety: Saint Laurent imagined a woman from head to toe, re-engineering an idea of beauty with a force few others could muster. The result was that every facet of a look, from jewellery to the knot of a bow to the dot of a veil, could be considered recognisably ‘Saint Laurent’. It meant many women could buy into a piece of the dream – it’s modern brand building, but as pure creative impulse. That’s a quality inherited by his successor, Anthony Vaccarello, whose commitment to a singular look is extraordinary and impactful. Again, he has created a brand identity so strong that Saint Laurent is semaphored by each individual aspect – here, a slender, high-heeled silk-satin pump has its potentially twee rosette in deep cognac reshaped into something angular, sharp, even vicious, as if to match Saint Laurent’s predatory vision of powerful femininity. It is named after Amalia Vairelli, a model in Monsieur Saint Laurent’s cabine from the late 1970s through the 1990s. He once wrote a note to her: “For my darling Amalia who helped me find this incomparable style of modernity that is timeless.”
The Amalia Slingback Pumps are available in three colours – cuba gold & deep cognac, dark lilas & dark ruggine, dark olive & pecan brown – now.
