A personal insight into Anthony Vaccarello's latest collection for Saint Laurent...
There is something unique about watching a Saint Laurent show – especially when it’s the last show of a season filled with trends, fads, and social media-driven designs. Saint Laurent always reminds us that there is another way. Your way. I continually feel Vaccarello creates what I want to wear. It's always seasonless, genderless, trendless and most importantly timeless!
Yet Vaccarello's Saint Laurent is actually a new perspective on what the brand is. It’s beautifully elegant and steeped in the brand's heritage. In this collection, we see the return of the old logo done in a modern way. It feels very familiar yet refreshingly new. The setting is stunning as Marrakech is part of the DNA of the brand. But the desert could be Arabia or anywhere in the Middle East and we love when designers take inspiration from our culture. The flowy fabrics, the layers, the tieing of shawls, loose tunics and kaftans. We love all of it.
In this collection, we find all that we love, however with strong shoulders, sleek clean cuts, muted colours and tones, mostly black obviously but with deep pinks, fur, shorts and loose trousers, elegant blouses and flowing lavaliers. Somehow, just when you think strong and sleek can never mix with loose and flowy, Saint Laurent shows you how to do it correctly.
Just like a Bedouin desert warrior, strong but also romantic and poetic. An oxymoron in the West but actually quite normal in the East. With beautifully tailored loose black trousers (could they be the new black skinny jean?) with the chiffon livelier blows and the slim belt, or with the shirtless suits, maybe that’s the new uniform – all things we have maybe seen before, yet not in this way.
This collection is a master class on how to be a modern man. Confident in what you want; your style. It’s also a how-to-wear the previous collection in a subtle way. The collection managed to create a silhouette for the new man and I love it.