Saint Laurent Spring Summer 2027 “Anthony Vaccarello’s Decade at Saint Laurent”. Story by Eleonora de Gray, Editor-in-Chief of RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Saint Laurent.
The Chandelier and the Decade
Ten years ago, Anthony Vaccarello assumed the helm of Saint Laurent, stepping into the formidable shadow of French fashion’s most mythologized house. His debut in 2016 was marked by unapologetic architectural rigor and sharp, nocturnal cuts that refused to bend toward ephemeral trends. A full decade later, under the nocturnal glow of monumental crystal chandeliers suspended against the Parisian night, Vaccarello offered no long retrospective speeches. His show notes carried an austere intimacy: an admission that this anniversary presentation had lived in his mind for seasons, emotionally charged, needing few words to explain itself.
Rather than looking back with sentimental nostalgia, Vaccarello engineered an audacious dialogue with Yves Saint Laurent’s own chromatic codes. It was an intellectual inversion of the historic Fall 1991 Rive Gauche presentation, where a runway bathed in darkness culminated in an all-gold finale. Vaccarello reversed the sequence entirely: opening with an intoxicating sweep of gold in every imaginable guise, before plunging into absolute, pitch-black velvet for the denouement. The founder famously declared that gold was the modern black, observing that an evening lacking radiance bordered on the absurd. Vaccarello took that proposition to its logical zenith, staging a solar feast that bathed the damp runway in liquid fire.
Metallic Parchment and the Saharienne Transmuted
The triumph of the opening movement resided in its textural defiance. This was not the polite, liquid silk lamé of a bourgeois salon. It was gold transformed into industrial substance: crackly cotton métallisée and crushed toile froissée that rustled with electric friction as the models advanced down the wet catwalk. The sacred utilitarian archetypes of the house—the safari jacket and the sweeping belted trench—were completely overtaken by metallic alchemy.
Consider the crinkled anorak suit: cut with high storm collars, gathered waistbands, and deep flap pockets, the paper-crisp metallic jacket crunched over matching knee-length pencil skirts. The fabric caught the chandelier reflections with the jagged intensity of crumpled gold leaf. Beside it, the immortal Saharienne arrived cinched by a knotted belt, trailing a diaphanous mousseline train in warm amber and cognac that caught the autumn breeze like a trailing plume of smoke. The contrast between the rigid, papery shell and the floating silk gauze captured Vaccarello at his sharpest, balancing tough, masculine tailoring with decadent couture drapery.
The Glossy Eighties and the Disappearing Handbag
There was an unmistakable cinematic charge running through every frame, evoking the high-octane editorial photography of the 1980s. Models paced forward with the razor-sharp posture of Helmut Newton sirens, sporting cropped haircuts, severe slicked brows, and sculptural gold ear clips that brushed the shoulders. The styling choices doubled down on uncompromising attitude. An evening slip top in burnished metal thread lace was paired with an accordion-crinkled pencil skirt, catching the light like hammered Byzantine reliquaries.
Elsewhere, the silhouette pushed toward daring proportion: a cropped bolero jacket cut from heavy, ornate gilt brocade featured miniature mink-trimmed cuffs, revealing an expanse of bare abdomen before descending into low-slung, cigarette-cut brocade trousers. A pleated gold blouse with a ruffled pierrot collar and gathered peplum rippled with liquid movement, anchored by knife-sharp stiletto sandals whose slender heels twisted into serpentine gold coils.
Yet what stood out most across this lavish parade was a conspicuous absence: not a single handbag appeared on the runway. In an industry increasingly held hostage by retail leather goods and mass-market canvas logos, Vaccarello staged an act of quiet defiance. Stripping the models’ hands of commercial accessories forced the eye to focus entirely on the garment’s posture, the swagger of a clenched fist inside a metallic pocket, and the pure silhouette.
The Final Eclipse: Velvet Obsidian
After the golden storm, night descended with total structural authority. The collection resolved into black velvet tailoring that recalled the purest lines of Yves Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking. A double-breasted velvet tunic coat, secured with embossed vintage gold buttons, featured an exaggerated silk taffeta rose cascading from the neck like an antique ascot. Paired with a knee-skimming pencil skirt slit high to the thigh and black velvet pumps, the look brought the celebration to a solemn, flawless standstill.
Ten years in, Anthony Vaccarello has achieved something few creative directors manage in the corporate era: he has merged his own uncompromising handwriting with the sacred ghosts of the archive. By turning gold into armor and black into silence, he proved that his tenure at Saint Laurent is not merely surviving the passage of time—it is illuminating it from within.
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