ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: Grunge by SAINT LAURENT Paris F/W 2103/14

Courtney Love seemed an unlikely muse for the storied house of Saint Laurent, but as Thee Oh Sees’s “Tidal Wave” blasted over the sound system with the decibel level of an army of power drillers, Hedi Slimane unleashed his grunge-inspired vision down the runway, his shaggy-haired girls stomping as fast as their hobnailed boots could take them.

Plaid flannel shirts or chunky cardigans with a hand-knit flavor were layered over glamorous evening dresses in the lamé-figured chiffons and glittering tulle that Yves himself loved to use in the seventies and eighties. Front-row maven Catherine Deneuve, faintly open-mouthed, might have recognized them although they were chopped short and worn with fishnet tights and that decidedly un-dainty footwear, or thigh-high second-skin stretch-leather boots.

Her benchmate Betty Catroux, meanwhile (stylish in Slimane’s Saint Laurent menswear), would recall those sleek pinstripe jackets or tuxedo spencers with the lean, mannish cut that Saint Laurent championed in the early seventies, that here were given a whole new context worn over vampy black leather miniskirts.

It was certainly a bravura exercise in styling (although not as potent as the same theme seemed when Slimane explored it for his fall menswear, shown in January), but one longed for a few more design twists on the Yves borrowings. That iconic green fox-fur chubby, for instance, revisited in soft pink (and shown, intriguingly, over a Liberty-print blouse and spangled underpants), looked oddly cool; so too, a Claudine collar from one of those Belle de Jour dresses attached to a baby doll tartan frock; Yves’s famous sequined trompe l’oeil knit as a sloppily oversize boyfriend sweater; and the black leather shift dress spangled with jewel clusters its sixties ancestor, in cocoa suede, is included in the Palais Galliera’s superb Paris Haute Couture exhibition currently on view at the Mairie de Paris until July 6th, 2013.

But a lot of the collection seemed, as the French say, premier degré, meaning, perhaps, a tad too literal, like a leopard-spot coat with more than the whiff of the thrift store to it, or a perfectly nice gray duffle that seemed, well, like a perfectly nice gray duffle even invested with Cara Delevingne’s tough-chic attitude.

Grunge chez Saint Laurent certainly has shock factor, and Yves Saint Laurent was, of course, the designer who managed to épater les bourgeois with his Mod biker chicks at Christian Dior in 1960 and his see-through blouses in 1968, among countless other epochal design innovations, but his work was always shot through with innate class, and this collection doubtless luxurious in the hand and elegantly merchandised in the showroom looked at times a little too contemporary market on the runway.