BEAUTY: Clothing--Saint Laurent

And to kick off Paris Week, here is the SS '26 collection from Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent who was inspired by a photo of a young Yves Saint Laurent playing tennis on holiday in Nigeria--he wore wide-legged cuffed shorts and a long sleeve camp shirt. That combined in Vaccarello's imagination with the idea of Saint Laurent having a grand time with his friends in Marrakesh 1974, superimposed over the idea of similar groups of young gay men--including many influential gay artists--having the same wonderful time on Fire Island in the 80s, before the plague. Put that all in a blender with some amazing, compelling colors (they all seem to have the same grey value) and you get garments with shoulders so sharp you could cut your finger on 'em, and ties worn twisted and tucked into the third button. The look is crisp, commanding, nearly uniform-like, yet off kilter just enough with the addition of the colors so as to be uncategorizable.

Taking place in the rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, Vaccarello's usual venue, models walked around a stunning art installation explained in the show notes:

"For the Summer 2026 menswear show, Anthony Vaccarello evokes a suspended moment, somewhere between Paris and Fire Island, where escape became elegance, and desire became a language.

This collection pays tribute to a lost generation, to the artists — Stanton, Angus, Ellis — who gave a face to silent desires.
And to Yves Saint Laurent, of course, who in 1974 sought refuge, only to create anew.

Inspired by a time when desire was style,
when beauty served as a shield against emptiness,
the collection explores this subtle sensuality, that fragile moment when one dresses as much to reveal oneself as to hide.

Ambiguity becomes elegance.

For this collection, Anthony Vaccarello chooses not the night, but the clarity of the afternoon light.
A deliberate rupture.
No artificial glow.
Just dry light. Full presence.
A geometry of exposure.
Not to display — but to hold.

The collection unfolds around clinamen, an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot:
a circular basin where porcelain bowls drift and collide, drawing invisible lines across water, producing resonance without choreography.

Silhouettes are sculpted, not exaggerated.
Cinched waists. Extended shoulders.
Materials that trace without clinging: silk, nylon.
The palette is hushed — sand, salt, pale ochre, dry moss, pool blue.

Nothing is declarative.
Everything is held.
A sensuality without theatre.

Shorts evoke those once worn by a young Yves, but there’s no reference here.
Only recurrence.

The space breathes. The fabric breathes. The bodies do not explain.

1974, Yves Saint Laurent withdrew.
2026, the line remains.

Not homage. Not memory.
Continuity."

https://www.ysl.com

Charlotte Perriand by Saint Laurent

For Milan Design Week’s Salone del Mobile, the fashion house Saint Laurent worked with the estate of famed French Modernist architect and furniture designer Charlotte Perriand (1903 - 1999) to create four Perriand furniture designs that were never realized. The pairing is not as random as it sounds, considering that Yves Saint Laurent was an enthusiastic collector of Perriand's work.

Perhaps the most beautiful of the four pieces, the monumental Banquette de la Résidence de l’Ambassadeur du Japon à Paris was commissioned by architect Junzô Takakura in 1967 for Japan’s ambassador in Paris. What makes this piece startlingly elegant is the way the frame curves up at each end to create side tables. The sofa is now remanufactured in limited numbers, crafted from rosewood, cane, and Jim Thompson Thai silk.

The sinuous, wavey bent-metal frame of the Fauteuil Visiteur Indochine (or "chair for the Visitor in Indochina") from 1947 was inspired by her time in exile in Vietnam during WWII.

Designed for Perriand’s husband during his time in Brazil, the Rio de Janeiro Bookshelf, with its rhythmic arrangement of open and closed storage, is crafted from solid rosewood with sliding doors of woven cane. The original resides in a private collection and has been exhibited publicly only three times in the past quarter-century.

And finally, the Table Mille-Feuilles from 1963 consists of ten superimposed layers of contrasting woods — rosewood and cherrywood — forming concentric circles on its beveled, recessed top.

Salone del Mobile in Milan runs April 8-13 where the pieces will be exhibited at Padiglione Visconti and will be accompanied by a book of Perriand’s photographs as well as a collection catalogue, available at a kiosk in Piazza San Babila.

https://www.salonemilano.it/
https://www.ysl.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello, creative director at Saint Laurent (YSL) decided to show his Fall-Winter '25-'26 men' collection off the usual Paris Fashion Week schedule (and oddly, smack dab in the middle of women's fashion week, but whatever). He staged the show at the Bourse de Commerce, an incredible circular structure in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, one of his favorite spots for shows (see previous YSL shows here). With inspiration for past collections coming from touchstones of gay culture like French author Jean Genet and the Rainer Werner Fassbinder film adaptation of Genet's novel "Querelle," Vaccarello once again looks to gay culture. This time, he imagined a fictitious meeting between Yves and subversive photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. While there is no recorded proof, it is at least possible that the two met at some point: Mapplethorpe photographed a 1983 catalog for YSL.

But it is this juxtaposition, this mash-up if you will, of YSL's high fashion and Mapplethorpe's unapologetic leather fetish wear (here) that creates the tension in this collection. Men wear blazers of boxy, 80s proportions with wide shoulders (leather trench coats and bomber jackets also make an appearance) but with black leather wader boots that come up nearly to the femoral artery! Vaccarello says it's a look "where you’re respectable on the top, but dirty on the way down." The collection ended with an evening look: double breasted tux jacket, satin lapels, but with the obligatory waders. It doesn't get more mashy-uppy than that!

https://www.ysl.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Saint Laurent

Well, regular readers, I had anticipated posting something--anything--from London Fashion Week but the schedule was so light, there was nothing to post about. I think each day had only maybe three events...and maybe one of those each day was an actual show. Honestly, I think LFW is on life support. Nothing to see here, move along. Let's see if it even exists next winter.

So while Pitti Uomo cycles through (I will be sharing some photos of the Peacocks of Pitti Uomo, as usual) and we wait for Milano Moda Uomo to start, Saint Laurent showed not on a schedule, and in Berlin. The show called "Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves" is a nod to the 1982 Rainer Werner Fassbinder film "Querelle". The inspiration and connections are many and cross back and forth between France and Germany...so hang on. The legendary gay French author and playwright Jean Genet wrote his novel QUERELLE DE BREST in 1945 (published anonymously in 1947 because of the gay subject matter, with illustrations by another legendary gay artist Jean Cocteau). The legendary gay German filmmaker Fassbinder made it into a film called "Querelle" starring Brad Davis as Querelle and the legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau. In it, Moreau sings a song called "Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves" based on a line from an Oscar Wilde poem. Current head of Saint Laurent Anthony Vaccarello showed his Spring Summer 2024 collection at Berlin’s newly renovated Neue Nationalgalerie designed by another legendary German, Mies van der Rohe. A classic Parisian house, Saint Laurent, started by a legendary gay fashion icon, now headed by a Belgian designer created a collection that is Teutonic vs. Gallic, and the mash up of what is known in French as tailleur, translated as "suit tailoring" and flou which means the fluid draping of unstructured garments. Hence the cross pollination of the exquisite architectural precision of Mies van der Rohe's steel and glass Parthenon and the flowing, silk and chiffon creations of this collection. Vaccarello has been working hard to do away with gendered clothing for both men and women; he actually sees a sort of middle silhouette that is neither masculine nor feminine. I love this idea of, not the feminization of men in clothing, but the promotion of true genderless dressing.

The immense shoulders on the tuxes and suits mirror the marble monoliths that hold up the ceiling at the museum. Such tension needs its opposite and the louche, off-the-shoulder blouses trailing long Isadora Duncan-like bows tied at the neck are a statement. But after the last Saint Laurent collection from Fall Winter '23-'24 at the imposing Bourse de Commerce in Paris, posted here where I observed that the attitude of the garments were steeped in a dramatic, darkly seductive power that is thrillingly approaching the Vampiric, we have landed in Berlin. And I still think they are all vampires. I mean, just listen to the tense, frightening soundtrack for the show. Overall, I get a little bit of "The Hunger" and a little bit of the recently remade "Interview With The Vampire." Watch the models with slicked-back 1920s hair stride through the space wearing dagger-sharp, heeled boots in the video below, while chamber versions of "Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves" plays...and notice how low the arms are on the aviator sunglasses, making them sit differently on the face. So inky black, so icy, so powerful, so ethereal, so indifferent, these Berlin Vampires. They'll drain ya sure as look at ya.

https://www.ysl.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent has been working hard to do away with gendered clothing for both men and women; he actually sees a sort of middle silhouette that is neither masculine nor feminine, and for this arresting Fall-Winter '23-'24 collection at Paris Fashion Week, he said, "I really want them [men and women] to be almost one person. So women could be the men, and the men could be the women. No difference. I want more and more to put them at the same level. No distinction." I like this idea of, not the feminization of men in clothing, but the promotion of true genderless dressing. And when one takes this current collection into consideration, well, goal achieved. I love the large bows at the neck, the trailing scarves, the sheer tops, and the below-the-knee sweaters that are, yes, dresses.

But what makes it so arresting for me is the attitude of these garments...they are steeped in a dramatic, darkly seductive power that is thrillingly approaching the Vampiric. Just listen to the creepy, atmospheric music for the show in the video at the bottom...it sounds like the soundtrack to "Interview With The Vampire." And the way the garments are styled is positively sepulchral. Even the location for the show--the Bourse de Commerce which currently houses the Pinault Collection--feels like some exquisite underground crypt.

https://www.ysl.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Saint Laurent

Although not technically part of London Fashion Week Men's, Saint Laurent showed a great Spring Summer 2020 collection in Malibu (while London Fashion Week Men's was getting underway on the other side of the globe). Anthony Vaccarello, who has helmed Saint Laurent since 2016, found inspiration in the echoes from the house...he looked to Yves and Pierre's Marrakech in the 70s, as well as vintage Mick Jagger from the same period. Vaccarello revealed backstage at this show that Jagger will be wearing some of Vaccarello's designs on the newest Rolling Stones tour starting the 21st of this month.

“Mick and I spoke a lot of his relationship with YSL in the Seventies, and he was showing me pictures of them hanging out in Marrakech,” he explained.

But why Malibu and not Marrakech itself? Vaccarello, who grew up in Belgium but first visited Los Angeles at age 14 said, "You come to L.A. for vacation. You can disconnect from the rest of the world." So L.A. is his Marrakech!

Velvets and flowing, sheer fabrics dominated. A wonderful, louche, bohemian, rock n' roll--even ethnic (tunics, kimonos, and djellabas with tasseled hoods)--sensibility infused the looks (I am absolutely coveting all the wide, high-waisted trousers cinched with huge belts!) as well as the location. Yes, the show was in Malibu at Paradise Cove, but it was right on the beach. Guests were given zebra-printed Saint Laurent flip flops to wear (no one wants to get sand in their suede Chelsea boots) and models strode out onto a wooden catwalk on the sand at sunset, waves just a few feet away, while a re-orchestrated version of "Hotel California" by The Eagles played. Wow.

https://www.ysl.com/us

Joni and Hedi

In case you missed the news, 71 year old music legend Joni Mitchell is the newest face of Saint Laurent via the house's Music Project. Creative Director Hedi Slimane himself photographed Mitchell just this month at her Bel Air home wearing a tunic, fedora, and leather cape created for her by Slimane.

http://jonimitchell.com/
http://www.ysl.com/