With his 2019 Pre-Fall, Anthony Vaccarello clearly understands one thing: A designer cannot live by the Eiffel Tower alone. Pretty much since his arrival at Saint Laurent, his shows, nearly all held in the shadow of the Tour d’Eiffel, have been the sort of pyrotechnic productions designed to cement the position of a global brand in the 21st century. They’ve also seen Vaccarello cleverly conflate his setting of one of Paris’s most iconic constructions with an ambitious and confident building of his own; that which can be achieved when the ateliers are furiously working at a couture level to produce the fantastic feathered and leathered numbers of his Spring 2018 show, say, or to take six perfectionist months to achieve a shoulder big enough and elevated enough to satisfy him, as with Fall 2019’s Betty Catroux–goes–Blade Runner tailoring. After all, this is Paris, baby, and don’t you forget it.
Yet away from the twinkling lights, Vaccarello has been busily and quietly building something else with his pre-collections; designing for those moments when a real wardrobe for real life needs to take center stage. “It’s a Rive Gauche way of seeing clothes,” he said of this Pre-Fall one Parisian afternoon a day or so after his show this past February. “It’s about a vestiaire, rather than creating a new silhouette. I like fantasy, but I also like realness. This is more the idea of the perfect jacket, the perfect shirt, the perfect skirt, the perfect jeans.”
Hanging from the racks were plenty of those, regardless of the gender of the collection. For if his women’s shows have prized the idea that a woman has the absolute right to show her body any which way she chooses, his pre-season collections for men and women skew far closer together. That said, there are still plenty of teeny-tiny Vaccarello trademark evening looks here, now shaped with one major shoulder and in a glittery leopard brocade or, rather wittily, a faded, washed denim.
Otherwise, it’s androgyny all the way. Shrunken blazers, some riffing on Le Smoking, cut high and tight on the armholes. Lean rock ’n’ roller-ish pants finishing at a length that just grazes the ankles. Monochromatic marinière stripes delineating everything from a house-classic matelot sweater to a fur chubby, a skinny cable knit pullover to the fabulously ostentatious and oversize furry scarves that came wrapped around the necks of several of the (men’s) looks. Save for a few Debbie Harry–inspired spike heels, the women’s shoes were as flat as the men’s, the result, Vaccarello said, of his reacting to the towering kitschy platforms he did for Spring 2019.
That’s important to note. Like many designers, his pre-collections have been the result of challenging himself on what he has done before and considering what he might do next. For instance: The neon blacklight closing moments of his Fall 2019 finale started with this Pre-Fall collection’s Day-Glo pumps. It’s why he has chosen to hold off presenting any of his pre-collections online until now, not unreasonably thinking he didn’t want to steal the shows’ thunder. Yet as to why, three years in, Saint Laurent decided to go public with all that he designs for the house, who can say? On one hand, you could argue it comes down to commercial expediency; the desire to show that the brand is more than just its mega-budget runway presentations; after all, Vaccarello has shown he has a fully realized vision of what his Saint Laurent can, and should, be. And on the other, it might be because those spectacular shows of the house and its everyday clothes aren’t in the end so very far apart.
At the recent Met Gala, with its pink carpet awash with all manner of sartorial bacchanalia, many of Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent gals stood out simply because they were in evening looks that didn’t try too hard; think of Charlotte Gainsbourg, for instance, looking terrific in the (relatively) straightforward combination of a velvet top and brocade shorts. Something else Vaccarello clearly gets: Saint Laurent is as much about attitude as it is spectacle.
