Cathy Horn is looking back:
“Slimane’s strength was never as a couturier. It was, rather, to anticipate that young people didn’t want to dress like luxury freaks, that they were a little embarrassed by the generation of Tom Ford and John Galliano, just as Saint Laurent in the mid-1960s had rejected bourgeois couture by proposing the original baby-doll. That ability to understand the mind-set of the consumer — and to feed the brand with images rather than words or personality (Slimane rarely spoke to the media) — is worth a lot more today than design skills, however grim that seems.”
I think that is the most important design skill, feeding the brand with images, attitudes, emotions and Hedi Slimane was a great master at it.