“A light shines all the more brightly because we know it cannot be held. What passes sometimes leaves more light than what remains.”
— Anthony Vaccarello

Nothing radiates and reflects light like gold, and it’s that single evocative color which defines Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent Summer 2027 collection. It has a long history with the house, of course, as Monsieur Saint Laurent himself adored it. “I love gold, it’s a magical color,” he once said. “When reflecting a woman, it’s the color of the sun.”

For Vaccarello, though, it allows him to explore once more the power of repetition. Not through silhouette this time, but instead how gold, magical and mythical, can alchemically transform everything it touches. His use of gold, pervasive, hypnotic, almost obsessive isn’t merely about ornamentation, but purpose and emotion. Whether it’s deep gold, Byzantine gold, pale gold, Renaissance gold, matte gold, Art Deco gold, burnished gold, or modernist, almost brutalist gold, its aura is felt in everything, illuminating the day as much as it lights up the dark of night. It does more than accent the collection’s rigorously worked silhouettes: it completely envelops them, head to toe.

Vaccarello builds his Summer 2027 collection by gilding the most iconic archetypes of the Saint Laurent wardrobe from over the decades: the sahariennes, trenches, blouses, and wrap skirts of Monsieur Saint Laurent’s era, to the new house classics of Vaccarello’s invention, such as the strong-shouldered coats, voluminous blousons, and short, precise suits edged with swathes of fur. Together they evoke the golden age of Saint Laurent reimagined by Vaccarello for the present.

His multitude of golds are amplified by the fabrics—lamé, organza, guipure lace, mousseline, brocade, jacquard, metallic cotton and latex coated in gold leaf—so that we see the color anew with every single look. His embroideries, jewelling, and manipulation of fabric might evoke haute couture, but this is intricate, artisanal workmanship which exists for the women, and the world, of today.

Gold illuminates Vaccarello’s accessories too, through a minimalist touch of maximalist opulence: monumental, jeweled filigree earrings, or shoes constructed out of gilded metallic chains, and resting on twisting snake heels, capturing the very essence of Saint Laurent, a frisson of seductive danger.

In the collection’s final moments, the gold gives way to black, absorbing the light as much as gold reflects it; a velvet suit with jewel buttons is pure YSL, but it’s a trio of nimbus cloud black evening dresses, impulsive and spirited in their freedom of construction, which evoke Vaccarello’s Belgian roots as the show comes to a close; what passes sometimes leaves more light than what remains.

Discover the collection in store, at Saint Laurent Westfield Sydney.