First look out and there you have it. She’s tall, powerful, mystical, and she quite literally doesn’t owe anything to anyone. The black tuxedo with nothing underneath marks the 60th anniversary of “Le Smoking,” one of founder Yves Saint Laurent’s most iconic signatures. The first eight looks that hit the runway all carried the same perfectly cut silhouettes.
Anthony Vaccarello is an interesting designer to analyse because his vision of the Saint Laurent woman is so clear that it is embedded in everything closely related to the brand. Let me explain this point, because it’s an important one. Most luxury brands endorse celebrities because they have a new film coming out, because they have millions of followers, or because they are the ‘hot’ name of the year. Not Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent has managed to create one of the most elite circles around its brand. First, they all look absolutely incredible in the clothes. It is a natural fit. They wear the pieces so effortlessly that you want to be part of the ‘cool girl group’. None of it looks forced or signed for the wrong reasons. That’s a huge strength when you look at other counterparts in the industry.
Then you have the set design. Saint Laurent shows are very often, if not always, mysterious and most importantly intimate. When others are throwing four rows of guests and you are desperately looking for your seat number in the middle of an overcrowded blur, at Saint Laurent there are so few guests that there is no seat number to guide you, just your name beautifully placed. It is a detail, but at this level of luxury, details matter.
Once the décor and the atmosphere are set, you have the Saint Laurent silhouettes. The particularity of this brand is that every season, especially since Fall/Winter 22 (Vaccarello has been creative director since Spring/Summer 16), there is no overflow of pieces or ideas. It is clear, structured, and the vision is coherent season after season. There is no surprise in the attitude of the models, nor in the nonchalant sexiness, nor in the height of the heels. However, Vaccarello is a master at creating trends, at designing and proposing something no one else has shown in Milan, London, New York, or Paris, yet it ends up catalysing a trend. We have many examples, but the nylon windbreakers are one of them.
This Fall/Winter 26, the opening looks and the statement ‘Smokings’ then gave space to nylon lace dresses, not vulgar in the slightest, with a colour palette of ochre, golden orange, and brown. Then came the oversized fur coats, belted at the waist, because the Saint Laurent woman does not hide her body.
Besides being a mastermind when it comes to colour (Saint Laurent repeatedly sets colour trends. All you have to do is search for orange in the current collections of any mass market brand and you will quickly recognise the source), something else sets Saint Laurent apart: there are no bags on any of the silhouettes. When you think of other brands, there is usually a bag on every arm of every model, on every celebrity, and on every influencer. Not here.
The question remains: is your show part of a huge marketing strategy designed to gather as many views, likes, comments, videos, YouTube summaries, fan pages, and cross media partnerships as possible? Or are you trying to separate yourself from the noise, to generate interest and create FOMO? The answer seems fairly clear. Saint Laurent is not trying to compete with the noise of the industry. It is deliberately positioning itself above it. In a landscape driven by algorithms and visibility, scarcity and control and have become the brand’s most powerful tools.
