Anthony Vaccarello Departs Saint Laurent After a Decade of Defining Modern Sensuality

Following a shimmering swan song at Paris Fashion Week, Anthony Vaccarello’s departure from Saint Laurent was confirmed this morning (October 9). During his decade-long tenure, the Belgian designer slowly reshaped the historic French luxury fashion house, setting out a seductive vision of liberated sensuality defined by languid, body-skimming silhouettes and androgynous tailoring. His collections were meticulously designed for slipping out into the sultry Paris night, with the Eiffel Tower glittering in the background, of course.

Vaccarello’s most successful designs were firmly rooted in physical sensation. These were clothes for feeling good as much as for looking good. After all, Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent woman “isn’t trying to please anyone or have sex with someone else,” he noted last month while speaking with Bella Freud on the Fashion Neurosis podcast. “She can have sex with herself. She doesn’t need someone to do whatever she wants.”

Her wardrobe served as her ultimate toolkit for pursuing pleasure and expressing her hidden desires. Sharp officewear was frequently paired with dominatrix latex or sadomasochistic leather to complete the designer’s vision of what he termed “bourgeois perversity” — the delicate balance between elegance and abandon, between acceptable “good taste” and a pulse-racing fetish. Vaccarello’s era was marked by unapologetic sensuality and high-octane glamour, and in light of his departure, we are taking a look back at the seven defining collections that shaped his remarkable tenure.

AN AGENDA-SETTING DEBUT

When Vaccarello took over the helm of the house in 2016, he faced a complex and daunting legacy. His predecessor, Hedi Slimane, had controversially slashed the “Yves” from Yves Saint Laurent in a bold bid to modernize and rebrand the storied fashion label. To put his own immediate stamp on this new era, Vaccarello boldly reintroduced the classic YSL branding, hanging a massive neon logo from a construction crane directly above the show venue.

The iconic logo was subtly woven back into the collection as well, with the now-legendary Opyum shoe replacing its traditional stiletto heel with the interlocking YSL metal letters. This agenda-setting accessory became an instant commercial success and a massive global hit. It signaled a definitive shift away from Slimane’s West Coast-inspired indie grunge aesthetic toward a more grown-up, sophisticated vision of after-dark Parisian glamour. Even then, there were clear hints of the design codes that would eventually become Vaccarello staples: exaggerated 1980s power suiting, dark and seductive fabrics, and barely-there, leg-lengthening micro-minis.

LATEX AND LUST

Saint Laurent’s Autumn/Winter 2020 collection stood out as Vaccarello’s most explicitly sexual offering up to that point. It was during this collection cycle that he coined the phrase “bourgeois perversity,” drawing clear inspiration from Catherine Deneuve’s iconic performance in Luis Buñuel’s erotic psychodrama Belle de Jour, a film whose original costumes were famously designed by Monsieur Saint Laurent himself. For the AW20 runway presentation, Vaccarello masterfully toyed with the persistent tension between good and bad taste.

Tailored double-breasted blazers and prim, pussy-bowed blouses were unexpectedly paired with latex leggings, thigh-high boots, halter-neck tops, and ultra-tight turtlenecks that clung to the body like a lustrous second skin. Despite the collection’s heavy sadomasochistic undertones, it also marked a notable departure from Vaccarello’s signature all-black palette, introducing lurid, jewel-toned purples, rich reds, and deep blues. Presented mere weeks before the fashion world plunged into the isolated, sexless months of global lockdowns, the collection served as a potent reminder of the enduring power of the erotic imagination.

THE POWER SUIT

Moving out of the bedroom and directly into the boardroom, Vaccarello had been playing with 1980s power silhouettes since his very first debut, but the Autumn/Winter 2023 collection delivered the most distilled, purest version of this vision. Razor-sharp power dressing was entirely reimagined as a tool for dominance and seduction. Sculptural blazers commanded physical space in the room, while knee-grazing pencil skirts featured suggestive slits slicing straight down the middle.

This particular collection helped catapult aesthetic movements like "corpcore" and the "office siren" into industry-wide runaway trends. A few seasons later, Bella Hadid cemented this legacy by opening the Spring/Summer 2025 show dressed as Yves Saint Laurent himself — donning a sharp black double-breasted suit and thick-rimmed glasses — which encapsulated once more the sensual androgyny at the heart of Vaccarello’s time at the brand.

SENSUAL STOCKINGS

Opaque tights are rarely considered inherently erotic; usually, they are treated as a necessary evil to combat the biting winter cold. However, with the opening look of his Autumn/Winter 2024 collection, Vaccarello completely upended that notion by reworking the material into a sheer, micro-mini bodycon dress. What followed was an entire series of transparent looks in subtle nude tones that walked a very fine line between underwear and outerwear, each crafted from the exact same delicate fabric traditionally reserved for hosiery.

Vaccarello noted that he was inspired by Bianca Censori and the modern omnipresence of yoga pants worn openly on the street, as well as by the famous Jean Louis dress that Marilyn Monroe wore to sing "Happy Birthday" to President John F. Kennedy — a look famously revisited by Kim Kardashian at the 2024 Met Gala. In Vaccarello’s hands, this transient aesthetic was transformed into a modern, sensual luxury. Tights tear, ladder, and fall apart easily under pressure, but that fragility was precisely the point. Vaccarello was deeply interested in fleeting ephemerality. “Everyone was trying to do more and more commercial pieces,” he remarked of the industry, “and I really wanted people to dream about something unrealistic.” Suddenly, simple nude tights became something to dream about.

THE BOYS IN BERLIN

Berlin has long been home to some of the world’s greatest androgynous fashion icons, which naturally means it has also nurtured some of the finest tailoring traditions in Europe. For the Spring/Summer 2024 menswear presentation, Vaccarello traveled to Berlin, paying direct homage to cultural legends like Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie through precise, gender-fluid tailoring. Skinny tuxedos, sharply structured shoulders, and plunging necklines proved definitively that the Saint Laurent man was just as sexually liberated as his female counterpart.

WHEN YVES MET MAPPLETHORPE

The Autumn/Winter 2025 men’s collection drew inspiration from an imagined, creative meeting between legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Monsieur Saint Laurent. The resulting garments masterfully married classic tailoring with fetishistic leather elements. “Respectable on the top, but dirty on the way down,” Vaccarello quipped backstage. Office-appropriate blazers were paired with kinky, thigh-high leather wader boots, while Patrick Bateman-esque corporate suits were layered beneath weathered, rugged leather aviator jackets. Through this collection, straitlaced virtue was exposed as nothing more than a fashionable façade.

SHROUDED SEXUALITY

The way the human body moves beneath fabric can inherently be a deeply sensual act. In modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham’s pioneering 1930 piece, Lamentation, she contorts her body inside a tubular jersey fabric as a physical expression of profound grief. For Vaccarello, however, this performance became the starting inspiration not for an exploration of sorrow, but for a celebration of nocturnal Parisian elegance.

For the Spring/Summer 2023 women’s show, the designer delved deep into the brand archives, reviving the hooded capuche dress that Yves Saint Laurent helped popularize in the mid-1980s. These languid, gossamer silk dresses were worn alongside oversized, masculine tailoring, once again uniting masculine codes with unbridled feminine sensuality. These jewel-toned hooded gowns quickly became a staple red-carpet favorite among major cultural figures including Kate Moss, Jenna Ortega, and Beyoncé, marking a fitting visual chapter in the designer’s storied legacy.