Living life through a filter is culturally embedded into our generation; every moment can be captured with your chosen subtly lit hue. However, the undeniable essence of cool, for most, still rests in black and white. If you search my blog archive, you’ll see I’ve extolled the virtues of Hedi Slimane’s Diary before. With ease and beauty, he photographs the most inane objects in an inky, minimal, black and white. Each photograph requires no label, no date, no description; it speaks for itself.

His appointment at the then newly named, Saint Laurent, courted controversy and has continued to do so. Disparaging reviews of his last show, with off-the-hanger comparisons, called his reputation into question. But suddenly, as we bask in a heat wave and the autumn High Street collections emerge, Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent offers a predominant influence. The monochrome trend continues, this time favouring black. His wide-brim fedoras are coveted by all; a crisp white shirt offering the only contrast and his Nirvana grunge for the 21^st century trumps all.

So, I solely blame the artistic elegance of Slimane for my growing wishlist of black shoes, black skirts, black trousers and white shirts. I’ve suddenly become enamoured with ditsy printed tea dresses and bobbly (in a cool way) cardigans. I’m also covetous of this new ELLE Collections limited edition – Sky Ferreira shot by Hedi Slimane.

As a nation, as a generation, we are quick to criticise. I too, fell foul of this watching the live stream of the last Saint Laurent show but in Hedi’s de-saturated world of black and white, everything suddenly seems WAY cooler*.

*I wanted to use the word RAD here to reflect the 90’s mood. I thought it would be less cringe worthy to asterisk it here. I was probably wrong.

Photo credits – Sasha Pivovarova shot by Hedi Slimane, French Vogue (February 2008.) See the rest of that beautiful shoot here. ELLE Collections – pinched from Rebecca Lowthorpe’s Twitter.