Last night, as the peach-coloured skyline of Paris darkened into nightfall, Saint Laurent opened the doors to its latest installation at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. This time, an entirely marble set, somehow with entirely symmetrical veins, complete with an Art Deco swimming pool. The setting was prescient. Marble is merely a simple raw material that can be transformed into something grand, after all – as Michelangelo famously said about his David: he was there, I just carved away to set him free. Simple yet spectacular, not unlike Anthony Vaccarello’s collection of utility-inspired ‘workwear’, an almost entirely cotton collection marking a newfound sense of ease for the notoriously slick Saint Laurent woman.
The show opened with a handful of boiler suits. But this being Saint Laurent, they came with perpendicular shoulders, perfectly widened legs, waists whittled by leather belts, hands placed in sparingly placed pockets that couldn’t be further from real-life overalls. The leather helmets and aviator sunglasses that followed hinted towards aviation pioneers Amelia Earhart and Adrienne Bolland, adventurous women who infiltrated domains once considered exclusively male. And eventually, the show’s star pieces arrived: Anthony’s take on the Saharienne safari suit designed by Yves Saint Laurent in 1968 and immortalised by Franco Rubartelli’s photograph of Veruschkha the following year — a piece of fashion history that symbolises Yves’ history of transforming ordinary, often masculine clothes, into tokens of female liberation.
This was a collection of workwear a la Saint Laurent. Sure, it might be dry clean only daywear, but it also had nocturnal appeal. The palette of maroon, saffron, khakis, earthen browns and sandy beiges are all typically daytime colours but were enrichened to work after hours. Superfluous details were stripped back, like the cross-lacing on the original Saharienne. “I wanted to do almost nothing,” Anthony explained backstage. “I see so many complicated things, so many embroideries, so many decorative things, that I wanted to take it all off, to do no more than necessary. To make a clean canvas. Start again a new chapter for Saint Laurent.”
In many ways, Anthony has the paradox of both the toughest and easiest job in fashion. As one of the great fashion auteurs of the twentieth century, Monsieur Saint Laurent left an illustrious legacy and well-kept archive — a daunting mantle for any creative director to carry — but also enough to last Anthony a lifetime of zooming in on specific strands of the house’s history and exploring them with subtlety and depth. Whereas other designers can struggle to formulate archival narratives (increasingly, many of them are trying) Anthony has been successful by being patient, taking enough time to truly address the iconography and themes with an unwaveringly precise lens. There is so much he is yet to do, and will do with time, which makes his collections feel both timeless and timely.
So, what about 1967’s Safari suit feels relevant for now? Fashion’s pendulum has been creeping towards a more bohemian mood for a while now, something softer and more romantic than the brutalist silhouettes that have been in vogue: the few simple, diaphanous mousseline gowns in the show seemed to suggest that, as did the armfuls of bangles and doorknocker earrings. Ultimately, though, this was a show about the beauty of ease. Or at least the idea of it, because make no mistake, this was still Saint Laurent’s signature power dressing, albeit with boiler suits and cargo pockets. Just like marble, cotton is a simple material — but in the hands of a master, it can be transformed into something monumental.
