Anthony Vaccarello closes a defining chapter at Saint Laurent with a collection built entirely around the house’s most dazzling signature.
For nearly a decade, Anthony Vaccarello has developed a remarkably precise visual language at Saint Laurent. Since taking the reins of the Parisian house in 2016, the designer has returned season after season to the same essential vocabulary: sharp tailoring, elongated silhouettes, sensual transparency, dramatic eveningwear and an unapologetic attitude toward glamour. Rather than constantly reinventing the woman at the center of his collections, Vaccarello has refined her.
For what appears to be his final collection for the house, that instinct for repetition becomes something far more deliberate. The runway is transformed into a vision of gold, with almost every look rendered in shimmering metallic shades that compete with the lights of Paris surrounding the show.
The result is less a conventional seasonal wardrobe than a statement about everything Vaccarello has built at Saint Laurent.
Gold dominates the collection with extraordinary consistency. It appears across sharply cut trenches, fitted pencil skirts, safari-inspired jackets, tailored trousers and intricate evening dresses. Metallic surfaces catch and reflect the light with every movement, creating a sense of constant motion even when the silhouettes themselves remain restrained.
There is something particularly effective about this contrast. Vaccarello does not use gold to create excessive ornamentation. Instead, he applies it to familiar Saint Laurent shapes, allowing the color and texture to become the primary source of drama. A classic coat becomes almost sculptural when covered in a brilliant metallic finish. A narrow skirt takes on the appearance of crocodile. A simple tailored jacket suddenly feels ceremonial.
The collection’s limited palette only reinforces the impact. Alongside the overwhelming presence of gold, occasional black velvet and organza provide a darker counterpoint. Mousseline scarves introduce muted shades of khaki, mustard and reddish brown, adding movement and softness to otherwise highly controlled silhouettes.
The effect is cinematic without becoming theatrical for its own sake.
Gold also carries a particularly meaningful connection to the history of Saint Laurent. Yves Saint Laurent himself had a long fascination with the color, incorporating it into everything from buttons and embroidery to lamé, brocade and fully gilded evening dresses. It was never simply decorative. Gold represented luxury, glamour and a certain kind of fantasy that existed at the heart of the house.
Vaccarello’s decision to build an entire collection around that idea therefore feels almost symbolic.
Over the past ten years, his work has often existed in conversation with the codes established by Yves Saint Laurent while simultaneously stripping them down to their most seductive elements. The tuxedo, the pencil skirt, the sheer dress, the safari jacket and the long evening gown have repeatedly appeared throughout his tenure. Their silhouettes may shift, but their identities remain immediately recognizable.
That consistency has become one of Vaccarello’s greatest strengths.
At a time when fashion often rewards constant novelty, his Saint Laurent has been remarkably disciplined. He has understood that a strong house identity does not necessarily require a new concept every season. Instead, it can come from obsessively refining a particular woman and the world she inhabits.
That woman is confident, sophisticated and unapologetically sensual. She is equally comfortable in a sharply tailored tuxedo and a nearly transparent dress. She does not dress to disappear into the room. She dresses to control it.
Vaccarello has also developed a powerful cast of women around that vision. Over the years, figures such as Kate Moss, Anja Rubik, Anok Yai and Binx have embodied the elongated, sophisticated attitude of his runway. Meanwhile, personalities including Hailey Bieber and Zoë Kravitz have helped translate Saint Laurent’s distinctly French sensuality into a broader cultural language.
Their presence at the show makes the collection feel like more than another runway presentation. It becomes a moment of recognition for the world Vaccarello has spent a decade constructing.
And if this is indeed the designer’s farewell, the collection feels remarkably appropriate.
Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent has always been about editing rather than excess. Even at its most provocative, there is an underlying discipline. Transparent lace, exposed legs, dramatically high slits and barely-there silhouettes are never presented as accidents. They are part of a very deliberate understanding of glamour.
That sensibility is particularly visible in the collection’s eveningwear. Dresses cling to the body, shimmer under the lights and move between elegance and provocation with ease. Black velvet and delicate organza provide moments of darkness against the otherwise overwhelmingly luminous runway, while the gold pieces seem designed to capture attention from every angle.
There is also a sense of circularity to the collection.
Vaccarello arrived at Saint Laurent after establishing his own reputation through intensely sensual clothing, particularly dresses defined by dramatic cuts and revealing proportions. His early work already demonstrated his understanding of the relationship between the body, clothing and desire. At Saint Laurent, he expanded that vocabulary into a complete universe.
Ten years later, the same instincts remain visible.
The difference is that they now carry the weight of a major fashion house’s history behind them.
Whether this collection ultimately proves to be Vaccarello’s final statement for Saint Laurent remains to be seen. But viewed on its own terms, it is unmistakably a declaration of confidence. Rather than attempting to predict the future, the designer looks backward at the codes he has spent years perfecting and pushes them to their most radiant extreme.
Everything is familiar, but nothing feels ordinary.
The gold becomes the perfect metaphor: luxurious, excessive, controlled and impossible to ignore. It connects Vaccarello’s contemporary Saint Laurent to the glamour of its founder while giving his own decade-long chapter a distinctive final image.
If Vaccarello is preparing to leave, he is doing so on his own terms—under the lights, surrounded by gold, and with the Saint Laurent woman looking exactly as assured as ever.
