Forty-nine looks, one colour. On Tuesday 29 September, in the Trocadéro gardens facing the Eiffel Tower, Anthony Vaccarello sent out a Saint Laurent collection made entirely of gold, then closed it in black. And nobody in the audience missed the symbolism of it all.
The show marked Vaccarello's tenth anniversary as creative director, a role he took on in 2016. His departure had been widely reported for months, and on October 9 the news dropped. Saint Laurent made it official, with CEO Luca de Meo speaking of "a new chapter" for the house.
Anthony Vaccarello | Credit: Vogue
No successor has been named yet. In hindsight, the staging had already said as much. As Numéro reported, Vaccarello handed a set of keys to the audience at the end, before a standing ovation. Singer Charlotte Gainsbourg then closed the show, wearing a classic Saint Laurent black suit.
All That Glitters
The gold certainly wasn't random. As Elle noted, the show notes also quoted Yves Saint Laurent himself.
"I love gold, it is a magical colour. When reflecting a woman, it's the colour of the sun."
Yves Saint Laurent
And Vaccarello took that line literally and ran it through the house's greatest hits: saharienne jackets, trench coats, blouses and wrap skirts from the archives, alongside his own signatures like strong-shouldered coats and cropped, fur-trimmed suits.
The real achievement was in the materials. The designer has always liked repetition, reworking the same shapes season after season. This time he repeated a colour instead, and pushed it through disco lamé, guipure, brocade, jacquard and chiffon, metallic cotton and even latex covered in gold leaf. Monumental filigree earrings by Laetitia Crahay and sculptural shoes by Corrado De Biase completed the picture.
Saint Laurent Spring/Summer Paris Fashion Week 2027 | Credit: wwd
Then the lights shifted. Look 50 opened the collection's B-side: black was suddenly invited to the party. First came a black velvet tuxedo with jewelled buttons, in a direct nod to Le Smoking, followed by dark, diaphanous evening gowns with billowing sleeves and long trains. Gold to black, sunlight to night: it was a goodbye, and it was written with real elegance.
Read one way, the gold is pure homage: Yves Saint Laurent's love for the colour, quoted in the show notes. Read another, it is the light of Vaccarello's own decade at the house, ten years of momentum, success and confidence. And then came black. Saint Laurent's signature, yes, but also the colour of mourning, of an ending. Ten days later, Kering made the departure official. In hindsight, the collection had already told us: first the light, then the grief.
Credit: wwd
A Decade, Summed Up
Vaccarello's Saint Laurent has been one of the most consistent brand stories in luxury over the past ten years: sharp, sexy, very Parisian and commercially strong. Under his watch, the house passed €3 billion in sales in 2022, before the industry-wide slowdown made things harder.
That's what makes this show interesting. A creative director who knows he's staying doesn't usually build a retrospective. This one looked like a summary of everything Vaccarello has done at the house, and a reminder of how closely he has held on to Yves Saint Laurent's own vocabulary.
With his last show, he left the way Saint Laurent always wanted to be seen: in gold, in black, and without explaining himself.