Fashion moves to Paris: the lyrical and sensual elegance of Saint Laurent opens

Fashion does not stop. It cannot: for calendar reasons, of course, and then because it is a machine that increasingly, and ever more cruelly, feeds on itself. The fashion shows move on to Paris, where the anticipation for the forthcoming renewal is at its highest. It opens Saint-Laurent: not with a change at the top but with the confirmation of Anthony Vaccarello's sensitivity, whose concentration on a single theme for each collection is maximum, demonstrating how limits, for a creator, are liberation rather than constriction, because the apparent monotony is a way of exploring nuances, modulations, subtle variations, not a lack of ideas.

This season Vaccarello works on a double register, material and narrative: He uses exclusively black leather, white poplin and very light nylon, like K-way, in a sumptuous palette of warm tones that go from marigold yellow to plum, to dress the Saint-Laurent woman in perfecto and pencil skirts worn with shirts with bows - Gianfranco Ferré comes to mind - impalpable trench coats and robe manteau and then vaporous dresses, like a queen or a castellan, traversed by flounces and ruffles of all sorts, made of technical fabric instead of precious silks.

The show takes place in a magnificent hydrangea garden laid out en plein air in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The flowerbeds and hedges design the YSL monogram, but also intentionally recall certain parts of the Tuileries, once known, before the advent of apps like Grindr, as a cruising zone, a hunting ground for casual sex. Vaccarello gives his woman a frisson typical of gay culture - it is no coincidence that he cites Robert Mapplethorpe as inspiration for the leather looks - but leaves her elegance intact, sealed by the large glasses that conceal her gaze and the chandelier earrings that frame her face and décolleté.

The vision is lyrical and carnal: a female on the prowl, whose naked breasts and sheer tights can be glimpsed beneath trench coats and dresses; a woman quivering with libido, yet algid in appearance. Nothing is as it seems and desire burns quickly, because clothes are an aesthetic language at least as much as they are a symbolic code.

The symbolism of Hodakova, winner of the Lvmh Prize in 2024 and a rising star, is solid: the Swedish designer falls into the ranks of those creators who conceive clothes as buildings for the body. Hodakova's are made from recycled materials, from books to straw to cushions, and have flattering lines, for women with long faces. All it takes, however, is a belt placed too low, or too high, to subvert the somewhat depressed, certainly leaden, rigour with a suggestion of unhinged sedition.