Saint Laurent Men’s Spring 2027: When the Fog Clears

by · WWD
Saint Laurent Men's Spring 2027 Ready-to-Wear CollectionGiovanni Giannoni/WWD

Thanks to Instagram, selfie enthusiasts and experience seekers have been piling into the Bourse de Commerce in Paris to get swallowed up in Fujiko Nakaya’s fog sculpture, installed in the rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce art museum as part of the “Clair-Obsur” group show, which is excellent.

On Tuesday afternoon, models emerged from the billowing water vapor dressed in Anthony Vaccarello’s latest men’s collection for Saint Laurent, looking way, way more chic than the moistened tourists jockeying for photos most days.

The designer insisted the work, titled “Cloud #07145,” was more than a backdrop, feeding his narrative about restraint as a form of seduction. In an unexpected parallel, long, snout-nosed dress shoes, some transparent, were clouded with perspiration amid a Paris heat wave.

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“I asked myself: ‘Why torture women with plastic shoes, but not men?’” he said with a grin.

At times, the fog coagulated around the center of the room, giving a clear view on the pronounced shoulders Vaccarello favors, here on elongated jackets in languid fabrics, occasionally sparked with jeweled buttons — a styling trick he borrowed from the late Tina Chow, whose portrait was pinned to the mood board in his backstage lodge.

At others, the models were nearly fully obscured, but then you might catch a glimpse of bare legs, since some jackets were styled with leather briefs.

The designer continued to play with colorful nylons, here whorled into terrific anoraks with superhero shoulders and ruched, couture-like sleeves. They came in sugary pastels and were tucked into the kind of high-waisted gray trousers Jacques Chirac might have worn.

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“I like that contrast — something very old-school mixed with something very, very contemporary,” he commented. “We wanted to lighten the silhouette, strip away the jacket structures, and make everything truly fluid and much softer, creating a sensuality in the movement.”

The designer also eased up on gimmicks — like the leather hip waders that went viral last year, or the pussy-bow blouses seen on Connor Storrie recently — to focus on “rather straightforward, quintessentially masculine” archetypes like a trenchcoat, vest or sailor sweater.

“I was thinking about how [Yves] Saint Laurent was one of the first to take everyday, ordinary clothes and elevate them. Back then, sportswear wasn’t the street-style staple it is today. So I wondered how he would have interpreted or worked with sportswear now,” he mused.

Vaccarello gave everything his inimitable dressy spin, his cape-back blousons and T-shirts cut in fluid, hammered satins. Meanwhile, his finale looks in lame seemed to be dipped in gold, including a trenchcoat, suit and a snug ribbed-knit sweater.

Still, no amount of fog could obscure that this was one of Vaccarello’s most diverse and approachable men’s collections yet.