Drawing on the heady days of the Beat counterculture of New York (and cities far beyond—those Beats were forever on the road) hasn’t proved to be an existential crisis for Anthony Vaccarello. There’s plenty in his fall 2020 Saint Laurent men’s collection that’s cool and covetable in his wink to that era. Those two qualities play strongly in this late-’50s-/early-’60s-influenced offering for one reason: the off-kilter classicism of pairing an impeccably tailored jacket with a beaten-up pair of jeans.
Vaccarello’s simultaneous elevation of craft and realism resonates despite–or perhaps because of—our collective experience of life these last few months. “Even with what happened to the world,” he said, “I think [this look] is always relevant as [it’s] a simple and functional silhouette.” Here’s the gist of it. Take a jacket, in worsted wool or muted plaid, and shape the shoulders so that they’re perfectly straight—“épaule carrée,” Vaccarello dubs it—and then sit them higher and padded, the jacket’s lean shape amplified by the shoulder line’s precision of execution. Then it’s every which way with the denim: high-waist or cropped, washed and worn, patinaed with age and life. They looked especially good paired with chunky socks and the kind of pointy shoes perhaps more beloved of an early-’80s-era East Village punkster rather than your average Alexander Trocchi-ite, but only just.
That said, those aren’t the only pants on offer here. Elsewhere, it’s a slender look that sits high on, or is pleated at, the waist then finishes to almost graze the ankles. They’re a boyish, lanky, and very current rendering of the kind of clothing that Yves Saint Laurent himself might have favored back when he was busy epater-ing les bourgeoisie during his (short-lived) tenure at Christian Dior. As Left Bank radicals were gathering at the Café de Flore, the young Yves, inspired by the Beat movement’s transgressive spirit, was sending out rebellious black leather to an ashen-faced room of Dior haute couture clients.
That linking of the many cultural narratives around Saint Laurent—the man, the label, and the myth—and Vaccarello’s own street-inflected sense of the house’s classic tropes is what makes his work so compelling: his constant restating of the contemporary relevance of historical legacy. (Though lately, Vaccarello has been putting his own unfussy way of dressing into the mix of his men’s too, most notably with the likes of the perfect leather aviator jacket, which has supplanted the house’s one-time affection for the perfecto biker.)
Yet there’s another French titan who Vaccarello has on his mind right now: Serge Gainsbourg, the musician, artist, and all-around cultural provocateur who was active in Paris at the time of the Beats. “I’m a big fan of Serge Gainsbourg,” Vaccarello said. “It’s like an obsession for me to always start with the feeling of a pinstriped jacket with blue denim, a khaki shirt, and classic shoes. I will never be tired of that way [of his] to wear clothes...nonchalance but extreme taste in the details.” Then, just to tease where his own road is leading him, Vaccarello dropped a hint about where his menswear is going. “I just found out this week a little secret about [the] details [Serge] was paying attention to,” he said, “and that is bringing me to the next collection.”
