Last night, I spent a well-worth-it 2 hours and 45 minutes (give or take) watching Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times. Fashion documentaries are definitely a weakness of mine, and this one was marvelous. I love being able to see Msr. Saint Laurent at work in his atelier, and to hear him speak about clothes. What was intriguing was how soft-spoken the young Msr. Saint Laurent was, when his work was so assured and beautiful. His way of thinking about clothes isn’t one that I normally think about when I got dressed (I’m rarely concerned with looking “chic” or put-together), but his vision is so inspiring, it’s hard not to be affected by his way of looking at clothes. His designs had a pureness of form (pureness not in a minimalist, “simple” way, but one of instinct) that isn’t common in clothes today. His clothes didn’t push boundaries the way designers are pushing boundaries today (by distorting and changing our perceptions and conceptions of the body, by distorting shapes and ideas), it was more of just a beautifully unique and joyful celebration of clothing and creativity. It’s hard to imagine how he created clothes that were so joyful and had so much spirit (he thought that fashion up until then was to somber, too serious) when he suffered so much personally.
But of course, it’s not hard to convince most people of his skill; he’s one of the most celebrated designers of all time. What I loved most about hearing him speak and seeing him work is that it makes me think about clothes just a little differently, it planted little seeds of ideas in my mind, reminded me of different ways to look at clothes. I’m excited to see how I can take this bit of inspiration and apply it to my way of thinking about fashion.

I maaay be just using this as an excuse to post pictures of Dries Van Noten’s great, great clothes (his Francis Bacon-inspired color palette is to die for), but I just found out that he shares a birthday with me (May 12th)!! Forget having the same birthday as a celebrity (couldn’t really care less), sharing a birthday with one of my favorite designers is WAY better! Why I didn’t know this earlier was a complete mystery to me, and it made me curious to see when other designers’ birthdays were. So I’ve thrown together a little list of designers’ birthdays. It’s actually sort of difficult to find birthdays for designers, especially less well-known ones (I can’t for the life of me figure out Junya Watanabe’s birthday. grrrrr….). But here’s what I’ve found! There seem to be a lot of designers with birthdays in April and August. Weird.So, do you share a birthday with an awesome fashion designers, or know of any designers’ birthdays? (Anyone know Alexander Wang’s birthday?!?!)

The list! (in chronological order):

Olivier Theyskens – Jan. 4th
Cristobal Balenciaga – Jan. 24th
Narcisco Rodriguez – Jan. 27th
John Galliano – Jan. 28th
Hubert de Givenchy – Feb. 20th
Helmut Lang – Mar. 10th
Alexander McQueen – Mar. 17th
Rick Owens – Apr. 6th
Vivienne Westwood – Apr. 8th
Marc Jacobs – Apr. 9th
Martin Margiela – Apr. 9th (wow, this is a gooood day to be born…)
Issey Miyake – Apr. 22nd
Miuccia Prada – May 10th
Valentino – May 11th
Dries Van Noten – May 12th
Esteban Cortazar – May 17th
Sonia Rykiel – May 25th
Christopher Kane – Jul. 26th
Yves Saint Laurent – Aug. 1st
Anna Sui – Aug. 4th
Charlotte Ronson – Aug. 7th
Hussein Chalayan – Aug. 12th
Coco Chanel – Aug. 19th
Gareth Pugh – Aug. 31st
Karl Lagerfeld – Sept. 10th
Stella McCartney – Sept. 13th
Donna Karan – Oct. 2nd
Yohji Yamamoto – Oct. 3rd
Rei Kawakubo – Oct. 11th
Jil Sander – Nov. 27th
Diane von Furstenberg – Dec. 31st
Ann Demeulemeester – (either Dec. 30th or 31st)