He started more closely analyzing the house’s archives to get at the original message of Saint Laurent “of mixing Pigalle with the sixième arrondissement,” he says of juxtaposing something as bourgeois as the Jardin de Luxembourg on the Left Bank with the salaciousness of Paris’s red-light district in the 1970s. It was an electrifying, eclectic perspective once embodied by Yves Saint Laurent himself. “I knew a shift happened from people and for myself,” he says.
The second came in fall 2022. The collection was rendered almost entirely in black and white, an exercise in restraint. It followed the death of his father and established the sinuous, languid silhouette that has now become a signature of Vaccarello’s at Saint Laurent. Vogue called it “the most lingeringly memorable show of Anthony Vaccarello’s career.”
Then came more hits, like the hooded jersey dresses from his spring 2023 collection, most famously worn by Beyoncé, and his Working Girl tailoring from fall 2023. His menswear gained momentum too, growing more flamboyant and daring, be that with revealing draped blouses like the one Storrie wore to this year’s Met Gala or with leather thigh-high boots like the ones Alexander Skarsgård wore at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Despite saying that he does not read reviews, he is evidently aware of what people have to say about his work. Many designers say that they are undeterred by commentary. Vaccarello is convincing when he suggests that he, simply, doesn’t care.
He has people in his orbit whom he trusts, he says, and their reactions are most important to him.
After his last show he received a congratulatory email from Helmut Lang, the iconoclastic and reclusive Austrian designer. He works with Suelen Pinho, a Brazilian model hired by Yves Saint Laurent in 1998, whom he befriended in Paris a decade later. When Vaccarello joined Saint Laurent, Pinho came along.
“When I’m doing something, I always look at her eyes, and when I see she gets emotional or when I see a positive reaction, I know that I’m touching something right that reminds her of a moment of Saint Laurent,” Vaccarello says.
“I think Anthony deeply understands that Saint Laurent goes far beyond clothing,” Pinho writes via email. It’s about “an attitude, an allure.”
“Monsieur Saint Laurent had a certain fragility and romanticism, while Anthony has a more assertive and striking vision, yet one that is also driven by great sensitivity,” Pinho says. “What connects them the most, in my opinion, is their ability to create desire in an instinctive way.”
Of late, Vaccarello has also turned more rebellious, more in line with his spiritual predecessor. He says he is shy, yet he’s spent the better part of our hour together speaking openly and sharply, at times making his publicist, who is sitting at the table next to us, squirm.
One of his recent women’s collections was about cruising for sex in the Tuileries Garden, and when a reporter asked him why he cited Fire Island as an inspiration after a men’s show last year, he matter-of-factly replied, “Because I’m gay.”
