Saint Laurent FW25 Let Opposites Attract
Designer Anthony Vaccarello looked to Robert Mapplethorpe’s progressive photography and Yves Saint Laurent’s classic couture to create a collection rooted in contrast.
Saint Laurent’s menswear is a masterclass in class. The storied French fashion house, led by creative director Anthony Vaccarello, staged the real finale to Paris Fashion Week Men’s on Wednesday (several days after the customary calendar had concluded) at the Bourse de Commerce, where minimalist walls contrasted aged parquet floors in a foreshadowing of what the Fall 2025 collection would be about: opposite attraction.
On the runway, Vaccarello explored the contrast in his muse’s identifiers: “an aesthete hungry for new experiences and a steady literary mastermind.” The designer’s moodboard included two main sources of inspiration: the classic wardrobe introduced by Yves Saint Laurent in his Haute Couture and Rive Gauche collections and the creative mind of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose black-and-white portraits often found the beauty in stark differences, too.
Silhouettes were informed by a “menacing, seductive elegance” that was one part the byproduct of Mapplethorpe’s controversial artist and another the result of archival research. Vaccarello’s eras-spanning manifesto prompted a timeless wardrobe of ultra-cool suiting, demanding leather formals, anonymous black shades and tough knee-high boots — all at a filmic degree of perfection.
That last descriptor was no mistake. Vaccarello, a movie buff known to adore the work of directors like Rainer Fassbinder, Paolo Sorrentino and Jacques Audiard, is soon headed to the Academy Awards, as Saint Laurent co-produced Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, which earned a record-breaking 13 nominations. His 2025 highlight reel is already off to a superb start.
See Saint Laurent’s Fall/Winter 2025 collection in the gallery above.
