Is there anything left to say at this point about the naked dress? Before the season 4 premiere of Emily in Paris in LA last night, probably not. Afterwards? Most definitely. Phillipine Leroy-Beaulieu, who plays the formidable marketing guru Sylvie Grateau in the hit show, joined her co-stars on a rooftop at golden hour to celebrate its return, and promptly reminded everyone watching that – even after Florence at Couture Week , a post-partum Sienna Miller and EmRata out walking the dog – a cleverly deployed naked dress still has the potential to cause a sensation.
The 61-year-old star turned to Saint Laurent for her premiere look – and who better to outfit the woman who plays Sylvie, most often seen with a Gauloise in one hand and a handsome younger lover in the other? Her transparent mocha dress, snatched at the waist with a whip-thin leather belt and worn over visible briefs, is from Anthony Vaccarello’s autumn/winter 2024 collection, summarised at the time by Vogue ’s own Mark Holgate as a “taut, impeccable silhouette” crafted almost entirely from the fabric used to make tights. In other words, forgiving this was not. Consider Leroy-Beaulieu’s choice another chic rebuff for archaic (but lingering) expectations around how women “should” dress at different stages in life.
Setting the fact that the actor looked phenomenal aside for a moment, she’s one of a multitude of famous women who have been coolly turning tired assumptions around ageing on their head in recent years. Take 57-year-old Salma Hayek and her swimwear shots , a lingerie-clad Naomi still shutting down the MFW runway at 54, or Isabelle Huppert fronting major fashion campaigns in her seventies. These women aren’t getting older, they’re getting better.
Vogue said Saint Laurent’s autumn/winter 2024 collection managed to slyly comment on how banal transparent clothing has become while at the same time presenting it as something new. New and, happily, appealing for fashion lovers of all ages. Because as Sylvie herself might say: “Young people tend to annoy me.
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