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“It’s not such a bad thing to be a muse,” Lou Lou de la Falaise once said, and she should know. She was of course the ubermuse: Someone who Yves Saint Laurent, whom she was doing the muse-ing for, was eternally inspired by, influenced by, looked to for what might feel gorgeous and ineffable and just right at any given moment. Her own look was the textbook definition of la boheme: soft, diaphanous, ruffled, heaving with eclectic and bold bijoux. Her professional Saint Laurent counterpart, the night to her day, as it were, her sister in style, was Betty Catroux, who could rock a YSL tux or a saharienne jacket like absolutely no other—and someone who was just as much a muse for Yves Saint Laurent as de la Falaise.
Yes, I am getting to the point, I promise; there is indeed a reason for this quickie history lesson, because it feels like, in spirit and in style, both these women are present in Anthony Vaccarello’s spring 2025 collection. It is a triumph of soft gossamer dressing—what we have here is a virtual ode to the dress, from short, smocked, and off-the shoulder to strapless, sinuous, and all the way to the floor—and the saharienne jacket reinterpreted to strong effect. It’s a combination that’s a gorgeous homage to the YSL of the 1970s: From the tumbling tiers lifted from the house’s archives circa 1977 to the masculin/feminin tension of that house-classic jacket, now swaggering, strictly belted, round-shouldered, and toughened by being cut from black or chestnut leather.
Vaccarello, meanwhile, saves the crisp sand-colored cotton the saharienne is more usually associated with for tunic-y shirts and full skirts, or a look that brings to life almost every single ’70s fashion fantasy of mine—cropped battalion jacket, plus button-through skirt, plus silk scarf knotted around the head then cascading onto the shoulders. And just to give a frisson of contrast, there are plenty of fabrics that amp up the preciousness, with gold threaded paisleys or mousselines in gorgeous shades of yellow, magenta, copper, and deepest green, and all a reminder that Vaccarello has emerged as quite the accomplished colorist.
In other words: All of this is Vaccarello again deconstructing then reimagining to great and convincing effect the legacy and lore of Saint Laurent, and underscoring that the house has always been a place to find terrific worth-the-investment clothes. It’s not about branding, and it’s not about marketing, but instead reaffirming the belief that a designer should be able to create something which feels like its relevance—immediately and continuing—is sensed quite instinctually by the person who’s going to wear it. So, the story here might be de la Falaise’s, and Catroux’s, and of course Saint Laurent’s, but it is also Vaccarello’s. From the outset of his career way before his arrival at YSL he always knew a thing or two about coming up with a killer dress. Now, with Saint Laurent, he imagines an infinite variety of them. And from there, the sky’s the limit.
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