When Anthony Vaccarello made his debut for Saint Laurent back in the fall of 2016, he showed at the house’s Left Bank headquarters at Rue de Bellechasse while they were being renovated. Essentially it was like being on the most glamorous building site ever, with a towering crane holding aloft an enormous neon version of the YSL logo in the night sky to remind you exactly where you were. (I mean, come on: Hallowed ground!)
Flash forward eight years—Really? It has been that long? It feels like yesterday—and Vaccarello decided to show once again at Rue de Bellechasse. The only construction this time was the semi open air set of a golden oval elevated into the air, akin to a huge picture frame, under which we all sat. The runway, meanwhile, was painted a shade of deep cobalt-y blue which was only revealed when the light hit in a certain way. (Or the rain. Yikes, that inclement Parisian weather strikes again! Kudos to the models who still managed to navigate it with absolute grace and, it has to be said, steely determination.)
Yet Vaccarello went back in another way too, specifically conjuring up Yves Saint Laurent himself, or more specifically, his personal style, right down to his weighty eyeglasses. It made for a truly exceptional collection, strong and compelling from beginning to end. Vaccarello showcased impeccable mannish tailoring in anthracite or black or plum of a distinctly Yves persuasion, with double breasted jackets and wide pants which were soft but so expertly cut they came without a hint of sloppy slouchiness.
Vaccarello had been inspired, he said, by reading an interview from around 2000 with Saint Laurent when he’d been asked about who his woman was, and the designer had replied it was him. “After I read it, I thought, ‘OK, maybe that’s where I want to start,’” he said backstage. “My last men’s show in March had been all about tailoring, but based on flou; I wanted this one to be the opposite—more strict. It’s not about when I would do a tuxedo for a woman which was worn naked underneath. The suits come with shirts, ties. You’re dressed. It’s about control, and power, in a way.”
Sometimes too a greatcoat or trench or voluminous leather aviator jacket was thrown over the looks—but regardless, everything came accessorized to the hilt, from the aforementioned eyewear and wide ties, to the jeweled shoes and the weighty gold bangles which gleamed from every wrist. It’s not the first time that Vaccarello has embraced the ‘done’ look that’s so much part of the YSL lexicon. Yet in a world where everything just seems to be getting ever more reductive and oversimplified, all fleeting image with nothing really behind it, Vaccarello’s counter-intuitive move to go against the grain was magical.
All of this came before Vaccarello did a full body swerve into brocade and lace evening looks of broad-shouldered jackets, fluttery diaphanous blouses and narrow short skirts, all of which sang joyfully with exquisitely rich color—fuchsia, hot pink, kingfisher blue, daffodil yellow—and were delivered with exactly the same swaggering attitude with which he showed the suiting. (It all comes down to the hands in the pockets, apparently.)
Except it maybe wasn’t quite the dramatic shift it looked to be at first glance. Vaccarello had already seeded the notion of an alternative to the suits with his soft pajama dressing (a long belted damask tunic over fluid trousers) which also came loaded up with the bijoux, clanking bangles and ropes of necklaces, a veritable tribute to Loulou de la Falaise, one of Saint Laurent’s closest creative collaborators, as were the billowing glistening gossamer dresses which rippled to the floor.
And for sure, it felt that there was also a whiff of some of the other women in YSL’s orbit here; those brocade evening looks were redolent of mega-client Nan Kempner, the NYC society doyenne who was part of the designer’s circle, and became part of the legend of the launch in New York in the 1970s of the house’s fragrance Opium, when Saint Laurent was also mixing with the likes of Andy Warhol. (In fact, backstage, Vaccarello’s moodboard was a montage of images of the designer, including some taken by the likes of Andy himself.)
In the end, going back to the house founder’s style, and to where Vaccarello works day in, day out on the collections, was such an instinctually smart thing to do. The season thus far has had a certain upbeat quality to it, despite all the challenges the industry (and let’s be honest, the world) is facing. And yet, and yet:Chatting to someone about how the season is going, they’d said that they thought even some of the best stuff is feeling the same; that it is getting harder and harder to identify a singularity of handwriting from designers. Blandness of unyielding ‘good’ ‘safe’ taste has crept in and outstayed its welcome. It’s certainly safe to say that Vaccarello has shown it the door; his collection was unmistakably and undeniably Yves Saint Laurent. Barely a day into the Paris shows and Vaccarello has played a winning hand. The rest of the week has a lot to live up to.
