MOTY Designer of the Year
Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent
Photograph by Pierre-Ange Carlotti, Grooming by Aimi Osada.
Anthony Vaccarello and I are sitting in his stately office, housed in a 17th-century hôtel particulier in Paris’s Still left Bank. Vaccarello has just introduced his spring 2023 womenswear collection for Saint Laurent in entrance of the Eiffel Tower, and today issues are so peaceful you can listen to his French bulldog, Nino, loud night breathing in the next room. Vaccarello’s office is minimally adorned, as if he’s still transferring in, with a tidy black desk, a number of Pierre Jeanneret chairs, and a small daybed underneath some bookshelves. “It’s peaceful,” he says, sipping from a tiny glass of drinking water. “And extremely stylish.”
Vaccarello, who took in excess of Saint Laurent as the brand’s sixth resourceful steward (which includes Mr. Saint Laurent) in 2016, is lots settled in. Below his layout, artistic, and graphic path, the brand’s revenues have exploded from $1.07 billion to approximately $2.85 billion. Even though YSL will not share product sales breakdowns, Vaccarello says menswear has been a steadily expanding element of the business. He notes with some pleasure that he’s obtained this epic expansion devoid of contemplating much about quantities, or paying out consideration to what is promoting and what is not. “I have the experience that fashion grew to become a little bit much too commercial,” he says. “I indicate, being industrial is not a undesirable word. It is essential to offer, but if you can sell and have a true information or actual fashion, that is a bingo for me.”
A single instance: He’s eschewed splashy collaborations with other brands and artists, and avoided massive advertising stunts of the kind we have come to expect from massive luxury houses. “I nevertheless have that notion of when I did trend when I was at university all the brands ended up so distinct and so awesome and clean. Now, it’s all about executing the upcoming collab and that variety of thing. I hate it. I obtain it super tedious,” he suggests.
What Vaccarello does instead is develop manner that resonates and experiences that are genuinely shifting. In July, in the middle of the Agafay Desert, a dusty, hour-plus ride outside of Marrakech, he staged his spring 2023 menswear present. Among those people in attendance had been gifted folks you would not rather contact “celebs,” like Steve Lacy and Dominic Fike, as effectively as dozens of other beautiful creatures putting on gauzy pussy-bow blouses fulsome, flowy trousers and at minimum one particular darkish cape that designed its wearer seem like a Jedi learn. As the sunshine set, a troop of slender styles emerged by means of a spooky mist. The to start with wore a powerful-shouldered tuxedo with no shirt and basic black sandals. A further wore a silky white shirt with a plunging neckline and prolonged black trousers that rippled in the wind. Nonetheless a different wore a massive fake-fur duster coat, which grazed the tops of glimmering black higher-heel boots.