Anthony Vaccarello brings Saint Laurent menswear home with Paris show at Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection

Anthony Vaccarello’s previous menswear show for Saint Laurent – shown in Morocco’s Agafay Desert, just outside of Marrakech in October 2022 – ended with a moment of spectacle. As the sun set, a vast glowing metal disk, designed by British artist Es Devlin, rose from a circular pool of water on the desert floor, emitting plumes of mist into the twilight sky during the show’s finale.

Yesterday evening, Vaccarello marked his menswear return to Paris with a Saint Laurent show that took place in the rotunda of the city’s four-centuries-old Bourse de Commerce under its muralled circular dome. Inside the space – which reopened in 2021 as a contemporary art gallery, home to the Pinault Collection, after a three-year renovation by Tadao Ando – sits a cylindrical concrete wall by the Japanese architect, around which attendees sat on curved black leather seating. 

’The gleaming concrete cylinder echoes the luminous circle at the centre of the brand’s last menswear show,’ said the house. ‘Almost inadvertently, the O shape, a symbol of perfection and purity of execution, becomes a recurring, pertinent thread at Saint Laurent.’

Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello menswear returns to Paris

The ‘ultra-focused’ presentation reflected this sense of clarity, following the rigorous aesthetic approach of Vaccarello’s recent menswear collections (the house called it a ‘sequel to preceding seasons’). In Morocco, tailoring was cut sharp and wide across the shoulder, juxtaposed with moments of fluidity, an opposition which continued in this latest outing, which saw an elongated silhouette hardened with ‘assertive shoulders’ and a narrow waistline. Elements of romance – pussy-bow detailing, soft fabrics like mohair, cashmere, satin, chiffon and velvet – met ‘hard-edged’ moments of texture and structure. ‘Each look is considered to a fault,’ said the house. ‘Throughout, the point-of-view is strikingly unified.’

Vaccarello also noted a ‘play’ in volume, proposing a more ‘ample’ silhouette in cocooning overcoats and billowing trousers, which were inspired by the cut of sweatpants. Proportion was also explored in ‘the idea of wrapping the body’, which was drawn in part from the house’s womenswear collections: ‘a reciprocal influence is inescapable’. Notably, it was seen in hooded garments, reminiscent of Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘capuche’ dresses of the 1980s, which Vaccarello revisited in his S/S 2023 womenswear collection last September.

The collection ended with the spotlight on Charlotte Gainsbourg, a longtime house muse, who provided the collection’s live piano soundtrack. As models circled the rotunda, the sheer visual spectacle was an assertion of the clarity of Vaccarello’s vision – and a welcome return to the home of Saint Laurent. 

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