A Silhouette in the Mist
Every few minutes, a fine water vapour rose from the floor at the centre of the rotunda, slowly rendering the whole space invisible; the dome, the walls and the people all vanished into the same cloud. Then the fog dispersed with the same silence, and the architecture reappeared. Within a few minutes, the same space became two different realities. People stepped into the mist, lost one another, and found each other again a few seconds later. Some simply took photographs; others waited, doing nothing at all, inside this fleeting invisibility. In that moment you understand that Nakaya’s work was not about producing fog, but about making visible the relationship between visibility and invisibility.
That day, I thought it was simply a striking artistic experience. A few days later, when I saw Anthony Vaccarello present Saint Laurent’s Spring/Summer 2027 menswear collection in that very rotunda, I understood better why Nakaya’s work had been chosen. Here, the fog was not merely a dramatic backdrop; it was the collection’s intellectual starting point. To be seen and to disappear, to conceal and to reveal, to make desire felt without shouting it… Every idea Vaccarello pursued this season was already present in Nakaya’s fog. Perhaps that is why, to understand the collection, you had to look first not at the clothes, but at the fog itself.
It was not only the architecture that vanished into the mist; bodies, too, lost their visibility. The human silhouette blurred for a few seconds, then reappeared. Nakaya’s work was built on exactly this transience. Being seen was never permanent. In his collection notes, Vaccarello likewise defined the season’s starting point as “restraint as seduction”. For him, true allure was born not of trying to attract attention, but of not needing to. This idea ran through every layer of the collection. Strikingly simple at first glance, the silhouettes slowly emerged from the mist, leaving all the attention to the cut. Unlined jackets, softened shoulders, fluid fabrics and a gentle palette moving between stone and beige… Vaccarello had deliberately removed every unnecessary detail. Because what he wanted to show this season was not ornament, but the silhouette itself.
Yet Saint Laurent has never been only about simplicity. Up close, a second layer of the collection began to appear. Silk scarves wrapped tightly around the neck, transparent Derby shoes, leather briefs worn beneath jackets and jewelled buttons… Through its details, a collection that seemed quiet at first glance rebuilt the erotic tension Saint Laurent has always carried. On the day of the show, Paris was living through one of the hottest June days on record. While Nakaya’s clouds of fog cooled the space, the insides of the models’ transparent Derby shoes steamed up from the heat. Vaccarello’s laughing remark — “If I torture women with plastic shoes, why not men too?” — broke the collection’s seriousness with a touch of wit. Being elegant and slightly provocative at the same time is the balance Saint Laurent has mastered for years.
The tension between bourgeois French elegance and eroticism remained one of Saint Laurent’s strongest codes. In Vaccarello’s words, the brand should stand “on that very fine line between classic and kinky”. Ever since Yves Saint Laurent brought the tuxedo into the women’s wardrobe, this house has sought desire not in nudity, but in the art of suggestion. Vaccarello has carried this legacy forward for years, but this season he redefines it by distilling it even further.
The pieces that recur throughout the collection — the trench coat, the suit, the waistcoat, the sailor sweater — are in fact the most fundamental garments of the male wardrobe. What Vaccarello does is not to reinvent them, but to lighten them. The structural stiffness of the jackets dissolves, the linings disappear, the fabrics become almost weightless. Flowing with the body as it moves, these clothes draw their strength not from display, but from impeccable tailoring. In the designer’s words, these are clothes so light and soft that you need not worry about them creasing when you pack them in a suitcase.
This approach also carries a strong reference to Yves Saint Laurent’s view of design. Yves was one of the first designers to take everyday clothes and make them extraordinary; in years when sportswear was not yet as dominant as it is today, he turned ordinary wardrobe pieces into part of luxury. Today, Vaccarello asks the same question: how would Yves Saint Laurent interpret sportswear if he were alive today? The answer appears in pastel nylon anoraks and ruched, couture-like sleeves — the very old and the very new meeting in the same look.
The past is felt everywhere in the collection, but it never turns into nostalgia. The jackets with jewelled buttons are a tribute to Tina Chow, known for turning her brooches and earrings into tuxedo buttons. The trench coats, suits and ribbed knit sweaters with a molten-gold effect that rose out of the mist in the finale are a reinterpretation of a fabric used during the Alber Elbaz era. As Vaccarello put it, every reference taken from the past builds a continuity that lives on in today’s collection. Here, the archive is not frozen history; it is living memory.
Perhaps the most important thing Anthony Vaccarello did this season was to redefine the idea of seduction with which Saint Laurent has long been identified. Fashion has long been built on being seen. Bigger shoulders, shinier surfaces, clothes that speak more loudly… Vaccarello proposes the very opposite: a wardrobe that makes you feel more by showing less. That is why the collection’s strongest pieces were not the transparent Derby shoes, the leather briefs or the gold-toned finale looks. All of these were different expressions of the same idea. The real collection lay hidden within the form.
Before leaving Paris, my path took me past the Bourse de Commerce once more. Inside the rotunda, the mist was rising again. Everyone knew it would disperse within minutes; still, people did not hesitate to step into the cloud. Because sometimes, to truly see something, you must first wait for it to disappear. Anthony Vaccarello’s Spring/Summer 2027 menswear collection for Saint Laurent was shaped around exactly this idea: seduction lay not in display, but in withdrawal; strength lay not in excess, but in subtraction.
Perhaps this is what true luxury is. A quiet but unforgettable presence that feels no need to prove itself. Just like Nakaya’s fog, which vanishes within minutes… It seems to leave no trace behind; and yet it does not fade from your memory for a long time.