A few days ago, Anthony Vaccarello posted to his Instagram account a video snippet of the model Amalia Vairelli. She is one of those utterly beautiful YSL women of yore, the kind who ruled Monsieur Saint Laurent’s runways in the 1990s, when the legendary past of the designer dwarfed everything, including himself. Off-camera, someone asks Vairelli: “Amalia, what is Saint Laurent, a memory of Saint Laurent?” Vairelli flashes the most gorgeously winning smile as her answer—and a lifetime of memories of the man—come to her. “It’s love,” she says. “Love, unspoken words.”
One of the things that has been running through my mind this run of Paris shows is how much creativity and emotion are wedded together. It seems you really can’t have one without the other, and they work best when all artifice and pretense is stripped away when they are in lockstep. Anthony Vaccarello, if his fall 2025 collection for Saint Laurent was anything to go by, is of the same mindset.
There was something tenderly suffused with feeling going on here; a sensitivity, a vulnerability even—this wasn’t some ridiculous fashion-y notion of runway valkyries. Instead, an unabashedly exquisite and respectful exercise in simply letting cut, construction and color—and what major, major color: fuschia, coral, amethyst, ochre, emerald, citrine, terracotta, and olive, et al—do what they are meant to do. Like Vairelli’s memory of Saint Laurent, it was love without needing to speak. The clothes said it all.
Except, of course, us journalists are backstage before the show begins, quizzing Vaccarello what was on his mind this season, and he’s gamely and good humoredly verbalizing what he was thinking. “I wanted something clean, with no ornamentation, no decoration, no… nothing,” he said. “To just push the silhouette in these saturated colors—it’s the most color I have ever done—in washed satin, and technical jersey, which I have never used before, for a sense of stretch. I really liked this idea of elasticity, of movement—all to give a sense of freedom. There’s really no structure; the volumes come from the shape of the clothes and the fabrics—and everything is light.”
Vaccarello was referencing Saint Laurent’s ’90s haute couture collections, a favorite period of his in part because the fashion world was by that point proclaiming that YSL was terribly demode, and that offers the perfect opportunity for reevaluation. Vaccarello’s silhouette started boldly at the shoulder and tapered towards the hem—an inverted triangle—for his vividly hued high collared coats denuded of visible fastenings, gently sash belted at the hip; mostly utterly unadorned sack dresses, save for the version in guipure lace; bow back blouses with narrow skirts (there was nary a pair of pants in sight); and, what has become as ubiquitously YSL for the house as the tux, thanks to Vaccarello, the leather blouson, all insouciant attitude with its bold shoulders and shrug-it-on swagger.
For evening, everything got reversed: nine floor-sweeping voluminous ball skirts, variously partnered with silk and lace camisoles or leather aviator jackets, with Vaccarello mixing up the house standard black in the most original manner with earthy tones of tan and brown. Accessories wise, there were epic leather gauntlets, dark shades, gleaming slingbacks with a curved talon of a heel, and gold sculpted earrings. What there wasn’t: A single bag. Let others do the merch walk. All that product placement; not so chic, huh?
Yet more than that, it was about Vaccarello wanting to be honest about what he sees his role with a runway show to be: Show you something that’s about creative élan and which can capture an emotion, a feeling. Do that, and there’s no place for the hard sell. And that honesty extended to his referencing of YSL’s couture; he might have wanted to invoke the emotions it gives him, but Vaccarello was adamant that what he showed the last night of the Paris season definitely wasn’t couture. “I don’t want to fake it—if you want to do couture, then do it,” he said, before intriguingly adding, “but do I want to do it? Well, yeah, I’m thinking of it.”
