Closing a decade at the helm of Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello shows at the height of exit rumours, confirmed by neither Kering nor the designer himself. Waving goodbye or not, he gilds women, haloed by the Eiffel Tower, until the last looks dissolve into smoky black.
Yves Saint Laurent ended his 1991 Rive Gauche collection with a finale of models dressed entirely in gold. Here, each silhouette has the burnished authority of an icon painted on gold leaf, framed like a figure on an altarpiece. In that light, the “Saint” that sanctifies the House’s name is no coincidence. To cover a body in gold and light, as the Belgian singer Jacques Brel vowed in Ne me quitte pas to do for the woman he loved, even beyond his own death, is to raise it above the living, to deify it.
Saint Laurent staged its show under three giant chandeliers, pulling back into the open air the Hôtel InterContinental ballroom where Yves Saint Laurent himself showed his Haute Couture. Vaccarello had already summoned that room, notably for his Winter 2023 show. This time, the Eiffel Tower wore the same colour as the pieces.
Lamé creased like foil, leopard spots turned to gold, brocade cut into sharp jackets and pencil skirts, sahariennes belted at the waist, wrap dresses. Chiffon scarves in absinthe, amber and cognac trail behind like the train of a procession. It is the House’s legacy wardrobe, dipped in gold. Then the gold gives way. The last women come out in sheer black gowns, knotted at the shoulder, draped across the body, split to the thigh, so light that the air dresses them as much as the cloth. They move as clouds move. Gold survives only at the ears and on the feet, the last traces of the day on bodies already given to the night. Charlotte Gainsbourg closes the show with a song that sets Vaccarello beside Yves Saint Laurent. The show notes carry one line, “What passes sometimes leaves more light than what remains.”
Vaccarello arrived after Hedi Slimane and closed his own label to give the House his full attention. Under him, sales climbed from 1.22 billion euros at his arrival to 3.3 billion in 2022, according to Kering, and Saint Laurent Productions took the House into film. If the rumours of his departure prove true, and given how far the word has travelled, it would have been fitting to make it official, with a clear farewell in triumph rather than a blur over corridor whispers.
