Formal pantsuits lend women a distinct effect that's both hard-lacquered and charming all at once. But when the le smoking womenswear tuxedo premiered during Yves Saint Laurent's fall 1966 couture show, no one was amused. In her New York Times review, Gloria Emerson said Yves "strains too hard" and described his collection as "outdated" and "very lumpy." (As for the accessories, "gold nailheads bristle all over" the "small, football- helmet hats. It is difficult to figure out why," Gloria claimed, but this gaudiness sounds only rad.)

Yves pushed his lady suits anyway, which caught on, and in 1975, French Vogue published Helmut Newton's iconic photograph of model Vibeke Bergeron in Yves's apparel, posing on an empty Paris street at 2 a.m. In Christopher Benfey's New York Times article, Vibeke remembers feeling "isolated, like in a dream" throughout the shoot, and the finished image immediately suggests a nighttime hedonism, with its strange mix of stillness and aggression. So much of this is illusory; the actual session was lodged with workaday ordinariness, it turns out. Vibeke's long hair was scraped back and pulled "tight, like an egg," to avoid upkeep fussiness, and because she'd never smoked, Helmut showed her how to hold the cigarette. She also recalls "standing in shoes with very high heels, and, for three or four seconds I couldn't move because Helmut... needed a longer exposure. I was hungry, thirsty, and sleep deprived. We'd been doing the collection for two weeks, day and night. Even if you're going to faint, you stand still. It seemed like an eternity. I was thinking, these are seconds?" And the following night, they returned, bringing a naked woman as Vibeke's prop, and took another photograph.

Back to present happenings, Seattle designer Celeste Montalvo pulled inspiration from this famous set of visuals and created fancy wool trousers of her own, which was a total ass-pain at times. For instance, the one-inch satin stripe along the side seam often rippled bizarrely or warped during construction. "I thought that was going to be the easiest part, but it took me five days," she says. (She figured it out; it looks great.) She also incorporated a raised, pleated waistband to replicate a cummerbund. And because she is stuffed with many ideas that fit unexpectedly together, Celeste hacked the length of one pair and scooped the hems, transforming the pants into '80s-style dolphin running shorts, and added a checkerboard-print synthetic lining. For another look, she maintained the traditional length but coupled the slacks with a shredded T-shirt, blending a slick funereal quality and delightfully trashy undertones.

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