Anthony Vaccarello never lost sight of where Saint Laurent actually began.

I've always been fascinated by the work of Anthony Vaccarello. The colors, the fluidity, the storytelling, and the seductive, sexy energy that the designs radiate through every collection presented for the house of Saint Laurent, but I never asked myself why. Until today. The catalyst for this moment was one word, "lineage," and what it means for a designer in 2026, especially one who designs for a house that started way back, more than 60 years ago, in 1961, Paris, France. But that would be just one aspect, and by stopping there we'd practically be dismissing everything Yves Saint Laurent did up until that point, or where he spent his life, which, if you guessed correctly, led to the extensive research that birthed this article. Born in 1936 in Oran, French Algeria, Saint Laurent's childhood, alongside his two sisters, and by his own words, "My mother spent nearly all her time dressing up," would go on to develop the attraction to womenswear through artistic abilities that would shake the ground for everyone.

In that moment, the fluidity that Vaccarello mastered at the house made complete sense to us, and we finally put a finger on why we feel like every collection put forward can be traced back to those times, through the colors, the ambiance, and the seriousness as well. There is something about a Saint Laurent show or campaign that just brings something completely different to the table, and mix that with the colors that scream Vaccarello, and it becomes impossible not to fall in love with the house. Often, creative directors who inherit a legacy house elect to treat the founder's identity as the small note that can justify a collection when an explanation is needed, or when the creative juices are running low and the timeline demands something specific, that's when they go back to the familiar, to the thing that already proved to work. So why reinvent something? There's no reason to, right? WRONG.

Vaccarello understood that, and knew he had to stay far from that “repetition syndrome” if he wanted to further establish his work in a contemporary lens, especially after succeeding generations of designers who worked at the house before him. And he did so, successfully, by continuing to build from the work itself, not going in circles around it. A quick look at the Spring 2027 menswear collection, previewed just under three months ago, inspecting the colors, the jewelry and accessories, the cuts, and everything around it, you can easily imagine those same clothes being worn during Yves's childhood. So it's not treated as a costume, like we might say happens across other runways, but more of an actual embodiment, a modern one, of what Yves's childhood probably looked like, fashion-wise, mixed with Parisian chic and sexiness.

Vaccarello is from Brussels, Belgium, born much later than the colonial-era world Saint Laurent grew up in, to Sicilian parents, which on paper is about as far from that world as you can get. And still, through an understanding of what true lineage means, and how to execute it properly, he's able to make us fall in love with the house every single time, with no exceptions. Cover: Pierre-Ange Carlotti