Saint Laurent. Spring/Summer 2026 - Paris Fashion Week

 

Anthony Vaccarello maintains his epicurean impression, true to Yves Saint Laurent vision, instilled by the hedonic 1970s and 1980s, when wine, small talk, cigarettes and sex were a normalcy, for pleasure, or used to ground oneself within a shared chaos era, which, lets face it, despite it being at the height of a Cold War and thermonuclear destruction, was less anxious and depressed than we are today.  So, Vaccarello, as I have mentioned in numerous reviews of his version of Saint Laurent, is only offering a simulacrum of what once was, in reflection of our odd, hyperreal, digitalized world, and worst than the First Cold War.  Far Right to fascist Western countries, with America and Israel already gone that way, genocide and all, and misinformation rife under, yes you guessed it, techno fascists trying to play out their utopian narrative, that dissent and countercultures will not have us populate the solar system.  Crazy times, but, without a renewed counterculture, we are only pandering to to the past, until the 11th hour.

The late Yves Saint Laurent sybaritic imprint, despite the excessive opulence, was tied closely with the openness of sexual liberation, which of course is a form of dissent against the rigidity of conservatism a far cry to what it once was 55 years ago, a gay liberation was crucial for the rights of sexual orientation without the fears of persecution and prejudice.  And all of this is unwinding under the most Far Right president America, and the world, has ever seen.  So, it's no surprise that Vaccarello has offered a rebellious gay imprint to his latest women's collection, be it the leather clad cruising of the underground homosexual community, which was predominant in the mid to late 1970s.

And this is Vaccarello's most leather orientated collection to date, although he has experimented with the Saint Laurent leather skirts, shorts and cropped biker jackets in past seasons, of late, it has been mostly sheer and revealing, with one night stand amamtory attached, after sipping Godfather cocktails (such a sexy cocktail) with your lover, in a dimly lit, trendy bar in Manhattan.   But, can Vaccarello switch a gay cultural aesthetic of decades old to women?   The fusion could be awkward at best, and more novelty based as he was quoted in saying prior to the show, "I wanted to start with, like, the idea of cruising from the gay scene in the Tuileries...I wanted to redo it in front of the Trocadero, having these women in leather cruising round a big YSL"  And remember, for the younger generations who maybe unaware, cruising means cruising for sex.

Vaccarello is not delicate to his homage of the past, more so, as mentioned the counterculture decades.  In fact, he has the knack of unsettling the restless spirits while sourcing trends, not in any shockvalue way, but without much care.  Even though the said eras offered a much needed reversal from the rigid, conservative and dangerously oppressive 1950s Far Right leaning template, it also had a lot of hopefuls who were enticed by those liberating years, and yet ended up in the boulevard of broken dreams.   This has been seen with some of Vaccarello's earlier collections, be it the heroin chic stylisations, or the fallen starlet looks, which are not at all subtle, nor very respectful of those lost souls. 

Vaccarello's Spring/Summer 2026 collection is made up of two parts, the 1st, is the woman, gay inspired, leather styled, 'cruising' for sex looks, to the romanticism of the ballroom gown as the 2nd part.  A dichotomy of the feminine sexual cues, as opposed to the outwoundly desires of male sexuality?  Maybe.  Which gives the collection a slightly philosophical slant, within Vaccarello's impeccable styling.  Be it, the voraciousness of the 1970s and 1980s nymphomaniac, which is a terrible term, as is hypersexulaity, stigmatizing women and their own interest in sex.  And when all said and done at the end of the day, is a lot more sophisticated than a male.  Let the truth be known. 

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(A.Glass 2025)