Anthony Vaccarello shows his Saint Laurent menswear collections in a space formerly occupied by the Bourse de Commerce, the stock market of Paris. Which is fitting, in a way, because those clothes always toy with the archetypes and stereotypes of men’s dress, rigid and rigorous tailoring, concealing – with varying degrees of success – a bubbling core of sexuality beneath their grain de poudre surfaces. Of a fashion, they’re a catwalk exorcism of the Jekyll and Hyde extremes within the persona of Yves Saint Laurent himself, in his gilded youth. Revered couturier by day, sex-club habitué after dark. He’s a potent muse.
There was a darkness in this Saint Laurent collection – Vaccarello acknowledged it, outwardly. “With what’s happening in the world, I don’t want to pretend that everything is great,” he said backstage, before his Autumn/Winter 2026 line-up of outfits rinsed of the succulent colour that has become as much his signature as the house’s founder. “Darkness came to my mind.” Dark, but not black – rather maron glacé, bitter chocolate, midnight.
The inspiration was Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin’s seminal 1956 novel of broiling gay desire – awakening, denouncement, denouement and ultimately rueful acceptance, all framed within the grey of Paris streets. Vaccarello read it cover to cover for the first time over Christmas: he’s thinking of optioning it for a movie via Saint Laurent Productions, although maybe we can’t say that. 70 years later, he was pulled into its still-powerful and poignant themes of yearning, less unrequited love than denied self, and the tension discovered “between something very conventional and something sensual.” Obviously very much his Saint Laurent bag. He thought it could make a great show.
It did. What that boy-meets-boy, boy-loses-boy narrative translated to was a dynamic, elastic reflection of masculine sexuality in cloth. It came through in a combination of sharp suiting – made in “very classic men’s fabrics, like you’d find in the 50s when the book was written” – and what Malcolm McLaren once dubbed “rubber wear for the office,” PVC flasher-macs and sock-stockings in slimy latex worn underneath placid pinstripe boxer shorts. Dressed yet undressed, buttoned up only to come undone. Heteronormative banker bro meets gimpy kink. If you watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, you know that combination is far more common than you’d think.
There were subtler exchanges at play too. Vaccarello’s tailoring was newly-cut, broad in the shoulder, seamed to grip the waist like a lovers’ embrace. With a too-tightly knotted tie, it reminded you of Saint Laurent’s own attire, his Savile Row suits a form of armour designed not to keep the world out, but the beast within contained. That didn’t work so well for him, and it escaped here too, of course – though never overtly. Jackets were cut with a low lapel break revealing an inch too much skin, knitwear clung tight to the torso below a scooped décolletage. Can guys have a décolletage? They did here. Some carried muffs of fur, others were worn around the neck as mufflers. Silk scarves were knotted beneath starched shirt collars, caressing the skin, drawing attention to it even as they ostensibly clothed it.
Sex and sexiness is a spectrum – straight, gay and bi are just its primary shades. There’s such a thing as material fetishism – a sensory fixation on the touch and feel of certain things, like leather or fur, PVC or silk. And any latent retifists will, as always, feel their pulse race at Saint Laurent’s shoes, this time chisel-toed mules in shiny patent leather. That said, this offering was, arguably, less overtly peccadillo-driven than past outings – the thigh-high Robert Mapplethorpe-inspired leather boots of last winter, say, named after Joe Dallesandro, sex worker and pornographic actor. There was an undercurrent of lust, sure, but ultimately, love is what Giovanni’s Room is all about. Which is what really fits – Saint Laurent has always been a house of love. Despite his nightly debaucheries, Saint Laurent always went back to his Maison in the morning. He would have been proud of this offering in his name.
