Moodboard: This Month The Mood Is Smokin'

The ninth month of the year, September induces rebirth, the autumn-winter collections tempting us to reinvent …

Blame The Blonde, une femme d’un certain âge, a born and bred Dubliner, still smokin’ hot with legs up to here, a tight Pilates core and sultry hooded eyes; better yet, blame Charlotte Rampling, still smokin’ hot at 79, she of the sultry hooded eyes (blepharoplasty be damned) and captivating gaze, promising pain and pleasure in equal measure. Muse to fashion designers (YSL and Dior) and fashion photographers (Helmut Newton, Juergen Teller, Terry O’Neill), Rampling remains an enduring inspiration to women of all ages, embodying classic, sophisticated, edgy French style. While we’re at it, blame Bianca for marrying Mick in Saint Tropez in 1971 in an ivory Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking tuxedo jacket, sans shirt, four years prior to Helmut Newton’s iconic photoshoot of androgynous model Vibeke Knudsen in a desolate Parisian alleyway, slicked-back hair, ciggie in elegant hand, in a crisp white cravat and a YSL tuxedo: louche, potent, unapologetically sexual. One tux to rule them all, and almost 60 years since Saint Laurent first showed it as part of his AW1966 Pop Art collection, still relevant. The Blonde tasked me with finding hers: pristine, preloved, perfectly timeless.

“Fashions fade, style is eternal.” Yves Saint Laurent

You may’ve guessed, Dear Reader, which one of us, trawling the luxe, secondhand designer resale marketplace, found the perfect soft armour and kept it for her selfish little self. The keeper? A Ralph Lauren Black Label silklined double-breasted silk blazer with silk satin lapels, slit pockets and covered buttons, and a pair of impeccably tailored, silk-lined virgin wool (spun by 100 maidens?) Tom Ford cigarette trousers. Smoke that.

Some things never get old: September’s back-to-school vibe (equal parts excitement and dread), cooler evenings (as if we needed a reason to layer up) and September’s fashion issues (feel the width). While Saint Laurent didn’t claim to invent the dinner jacket and dressing women in men’s clothes, he likely appropriated it – think bisexual black bandleader Josephine Baker in top hat, white tie and tails in her 1932 revue, La Joie de Paris. And black lesbian blues singer and drag king Gladys Bentley, reigning over gay speakeasies in a white tux and top hat during the Harlem Renaissance. “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”, “a sartorial history of black dandyism” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art until October celebrates 300 years of what late designer Virgil Abloh called “the black imagination”.

Make a beeline for Brown Thomas where the double breasted, six-button, silk-lined wool Saint blazer (for righteous sinners) features peaked lapels and padded shoulders to rival Talking Heads David Byrne’s Stop Making Sense “Big Suit”. Or earn street cred and choose a suit from Mexican-American designer Willy Chavarria’s SS26 Huron collection. A vocal ally of the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as classic black, Chavarria’s fiery colours sing out in defiance of cruel ICE deportation policies: Eau de nil, red, pink, yellow, gold, turquoise – “colour as an act of rebellion,” said Chavarria; the suit as smoking gun. @susanzelouf