Saint Laurent: The Golden Age according to Anthony Vaccarello

On Tuesday evening, the Eiffel Tower glittered, opening and closing Anthony Vaccarello’s intense Saint Laurent show in a breathtaking dialogue—an almost monochrome ode to gold, suffused with the nostalgia of a possible final show.

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The silhouettes and garments receded, the designer’s Spring-Summer 2027 collection reading as an irresistible torrent of molten gold.

Within this hypnotic monochrome, a few of the house’s signatures emerged: midi skirts and safari jackets, fitted trench coats, and dresses with cap sleeves or rendered in sheer lace.

Gold—patinated, iridescent, reflective, or absorbed into leather—clothes the models from feet, shod in strappy sandals, to heads, adorned with the oversized gold jewellery so characteristic of Saint Laurent.

The event was staged on the Trocadéro esplanade, opposite the illuminated Eiffel Tower, where a striking interplay of light and shimmer played out between the Iron Lady and immense golden chandeliers suspended in the warm Indian summer sky.

“I love gold; it’s a magical colour,” said Yves Saint Laurent, as quoted in the show notes.

The couturier’s love of gold drew on his sun-drenched memories of Oran and Marrakesh, on the objects he collected with Pierre Bergé, and on the accessories created by Loulou de la Falaise.

For this collection, the creative director sought “an omnipresent, hypnotic, almost obsessive use of gold.”

Among the celebrities in attendance were Charlotte Gainsbourg, who accompanied the designer’s final bow in song, Hailey Bieber, and Rosé of Blackpink.

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Appointed in 2016 to succeed Hedi Slimane, Anthony Vaccarello, 44, has defined a recognisable style over the past decade: sensuality heightened by transparency, powerful shoulders, Le Smoking, metal and black. Under his leadership, the house surpassed the three-billion-euro sales mark in 2022, before, like the rest of the sector, experiencing the slowdown in the luxury market.

Reports—unconfirmed by the house but widely circulated, first published by the American website Puck—suggest the Belgian designer is set to leave after a decade at the helm of Saint Laurent.

“What departs sometimes leaves more light than what remains,” the designer concludes in his show notes, without further elaboration.