There’s a lot to be said for smart tailoring and attractive dresses. But in the Yves Saint Laurent show on Thursday night, they couldn’t distract from the feeling that Stefano Pilati had tried too hard to deliver a major statement. If hardly new (and what is?), Pilati’s East-meets-West starting point had potential, though, as his program notes indicated, he wanted no part of anything obvious: “Here it is the spirit of a thing that is paramount; this spirit is given significance by trace and circumscribed space rather than by literal evidence.” If that sounds like some professor in peak intimidate-the-freshmen form, the show played like a painstakingly thought-out academic exercise. Which should not be confused with Fashion 101. These clothes were beautifully crafted, but ponderous to an extreme.

Still, there were good moments. Giant bows gave black dresses a shot of fancy; an opalescent white coat looked ultraglam. So did a lean coatdress and cropped gray jumpsuit, and Pilati worked a kimono effect beautifully in a navy teardrop jacquard. But many of the sheer looks lacked elegance, and if a girl doesn’t like droopy-drawer pants, she is out of luck. Yet the biggest problem was the weight, not of the clothes themselves, but their mood, as if style had gone searching for substance and got stymied along the way.