Anthony Vaccarello’s love affair with the Eiffel Tower continued this Spring/Summer 2027 season, as Saint Laurent returned to its familiar Parisian backdrop for a dazzling procession of fashion against gold and black. Suspended chandeliers and towering candelabras illuminated a glossy runway, their reflections mingling with those of the models and the glittering tower beyond.
The theatrical setting brought the ballroom outdoors, recalling the salons of the InterContinental Paris Le Grand, where Monsieur Yves Saint Laurent once presented his collections. Here, however, Vaccarello transformed that history into something distinctly his own: monumental, cinematic and unmistakably nocturnal.
The occasion also marked Vaccarello’s tenth year at Saint Laurent, a milestone celebrated beneath all that gold with house ambassadors, friends and fellow designers gathered in black.
All That Glitters
Courtesy of Saint Laurent.
Courtesy of Saint Laurent.
“I love gold, it’s a magical color,” Yves Saint Laurent once said. “When reflecting a woman, it’s the color of the sun.” For Spring/Summer 2027, Vaccarello took that fascination almost literally. Of the collection’s 59 looks, the first 49 explored gold before giving way to a finale of ten in black.
Yet the narrow palette hardly proved limiting. Gold shifted constantly in tone and texture: pale and deep, matte and burnished, Renaissance and Art Deco, Byzantine and Brutalist. Lamé, organza, guipure lace, mousseline, brocade, jacquard, metallic cotton and latex each manipulated light differently, allowing materiality rather than color alone to create contrast.
Familiar Saint Laurent archetypes moved through this spectrum: trench coats, blouses, wrap skirts, sahariennes and sharply cut suits appeared alongside the strong shoulders, exaggerated coats and body-conscious silhouettes that have become signatures of Vaccarello’s tenure. Archival codes and his own vocabulary sat side by side rather than competing with one another.
The strongest looks treated gold less like decoration than construction. Dense embroidery gave surfaces an almost sculpted quality, while feathered cuffs interrupted harder silhouettes with flashes of softness and movement. Elsewhere, slouchier skirt-and-jacket combinations were punctuated by long scarves wrapped around the neck, bringing occasional streaks of green, red, blue and yellow into the otherwise gilded procession.
Accessories followed suit. Metallic chains and twisting snake heels extended the collection’s sense of seduction down to the smallest details.
From Gold to Black
Courtesy of Saint Laurent.
Courtesy of Saint Laurent.
After nearly 50 variations on gold, the final ten black looks dramatically changed the atmosphere. Against the night, they nearly disappeared into the runway, revealed by the reflections of chandeliers and the Eiffel Tower.
Velvet tailoring embellished with jewel-like buttons returned to a classic Saint Laurent vocabulary, while voluminous evening dresses moved away from the sharper, more body-conscious silhouettes that preceded them. The shift made the finale feel less like a rejection of gold than its inverse: where the first part of the collection reflected every source of light, the last absorbed it.
That tension between brilliance and darkness also gave context to Vaccarello’s show notes. “A light shines all the more brightly because we know it cannot be held,” he wrote. “What passes sometimes leaves more light than what remains.”
Ten Years in the House
Courtesy of Saint Laurent.
Courtesy of Saint Laurent.
The finale provided one last enigmatic gesture. After taking his bow, Vaccarello handed a key to a young boy in the audience—a small moment that immediately invited questions about its symbolism. A house key? A gesture toward inheritance, continuity or simply the next generation? Vaccarello offered no explanation, leaving the image deliberately open-ended.
Perhaps that ambiguity was fitting for a Spring/Summer 2027 collection concerned with reflection, memory and the passage of time. Ten years into his tenure, Vaccarello did not simply reproduce the codes of Yves Saint Laurent. He placed them alongside his own: the founder’s gold against his black, archival archetypes against contemporary proportions, haute couture-like embellishment against a harder modern sensuality.
For one night beneath the Eiffel Tower, a decade at Saint Laurent was reflected back in gold
Courtesy of Saint Laurent.
