For the Saint Laurent Winter 2024 womenswear collection, Anthony Vaccarello reminds us of what once was at the center of fashion by rendering it invisible: clothes.
Transparency – a Saint Laurent signature – is re-read, minimizing the distance between garment and skin so the two effectively meld and fabric evaporates like mist. Caressing the leg just below the knee, the length is classic, but the content is novel.
Evoking the indelible ‘naked’ gown worn for her last public appearance by Marilyn Monroe – a frequent reference for the maison – an unsettling ambivalence cuts through the looks. Puncturing the propriety of feminine artifice, ephemeral lightness turns out to be an illusion: can purity be provocative?
In the end, the spectral – a memory of fashion as we once knew it – becomes tangible, embodied by the confident Saint Laurent woman and her worldly appetites. As iconic Saint Laurent pieces are remade in a powdery, make-up-like palette, agency meets desire, adventure entwines risk, and resilience fails to conceal fragility. Even tailored items assume a rare fluidity, from a crepe georgette suit that appears to liquify on the body to the immaterial levity of a coat made of countless marabou feathers.
The see-through theme, transposed through a resolutely current prism, extends to brazen glass jewelry that brings to mind a mold rather than an actual shape, while the notion of entering an intimate realm informs the boudoir-like location: two circular rooms lined in emerald velvet damask, a nod to the salons of the avenue Marceau.
