There was a feeling of circularity to Anthony Vaccarrello’s S/S 2025 show for Saint Laurent, held at the house’s Left Bank headquarters for the first time since the Belgian designer staged his debut there eight years prior. In the time between, Vaccarrello has proved increasingly adept at translating the codes of the Yves Saint Laurent – a mood of powerful sensuality and gilded opulence, a clash of the masculine and feminine, an unabashed use of colour – into a sharp, contemporary vision which often centres on the impact of a singular silhouette.
Design Awards 2025: Saint Laurent’s designer doppelgangers
Bella Hadid, in her return to the runway, became an Yves Saint Laurent doppelganger, donning the couturier’s signature tailored uniform
For S/S 2025, Vaccarrello evoked Yves Saint Laurent more directly, sending out a cast of models wearing riffs on the couturier’s personal uniform: louche, often double-breasted tailoring, wide across the shoulders and fluid in shape, worn with a tie. Among them was the model Bella Hadid in a rare runway appearance, donning a pair of Yves Saint Laurent’s signature thick-rimmed glasses.
‘No other house is as linked to a quintessential female archetype as Saint Laurent, whose ideal woman is more complex than the seductive perfection of classic muses,’ said Vaccarello of his era-spanning homage, a collection we’ve chosen to award for its dramatic doppelgangers. ‘As Yves Saint Laurent could have said: I am the Saint Laurent woman.’
Find all the Wallpaper* Design Award 2025 winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.