Le Smoking
A black wool grain-de-poudre tuxedo suit with satin lapels designed specifically for women, with tapered trousers rather than a skirt, first worn publicly by model Danielle Heymann at a Saint Laurent event in 1966. Saint Laurent offered it again and again in subsequent collections — over 40 versions across three decades — treating it as a garment whose relevance was permanent rather than seasonal. He styled it with bare chest, silk evening blouse, or crisp white shirt, demonstrating its versatility as a vehicle for many different expressions of femininity.
Le Smoking was the first garment designed specifically for women that fully embraced masculine tailoring without apology or irony, establishing the tuxedo suit as a symbol of female power and gender fluidity that remains potent today. Saint Laurent said it gave a woman "the best sartorial weapon the fashion system ever devised," and its influence is visible in every power suit, pantsuit, and tailored trouser look since. Catherine Deneuve, Bianca Jagger, and Helmut Newton's photographs made it an icon of a new kind of female sexuality.
Saint Laurent created Le Smoking during the height of second-wave feminism, as women were entering professional workplaces in large numbers and the question of what professional female dress should look like was genuinely unresolved. His solution — appropriating the most prestigious item of male formal dress without modification — was an act of aesthetic politics as radical as any slogan.