The collection draws its emotional core from James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, that seminal 1956 novel about desire, displacement, and the psychological weight of conventional masculinity

Vaccarello has seized on the novel’s most potent image: David leaving Giovanni’s Paris room at early dawn, the exchange of desire and yearning giving way to the pressure of what lies ahead. It’s a moment of transformation, yes—but also one of necessary performance. The clothes that follow aren’t about liberation. They’re about re-entry.

The light, the reveal, the promise of yet another Parisian morning dawning: It's much more than a picture perfect, post card fantasy of Paris; it is a reality experienced every single day in rooms and homes right across the city. With it also comes the story of all that happened to us before dawn, put into clear focus as night gives way to morning. It's this moment of liminal time, intimate and unique to us all, which manifests itself in Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello's Winter 2026 collection. It explores intimacy, vulnerability, and an eroticism which embraces personal expression over sensationalised spectacle. What emerges is Vaccarello's continuing questioning of what maleness and masculinity can mean at the house of Saint Laurent.

Vaccarello expresses all of this with his Winter 2026 Saint Laurent collection. He sketches out a lean, sinuous silhouette, simultaneously fragile and strong. Soft, crumpled textures show the passage of time; what we've worn, what we've loved. Sharp shoulders cloak vulnerability, without denying it. The frame of the wearer's clothing is highlighted by the manner with which it is revealed and concealed, eroticised without ever being exhibitionist. The house's signature smoking takes on an almost armour like strength, vanquishing uncertainty and the unknown. And high boots ground the look, bringing it to earth. Standing over all of this, Vaccarello choses to use that most Saint Laurent of colours, black, to realise his Winter 2026, chosen for its classicism and its iconoclasm.

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