On a black January night in Paris, a surreal roll-call of stars convenes in a tiny side room in the Bourse de Commerce, the contemporary art gallery owned by the Pinault clan. Kate Moss, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rami Malek, Kid Cudi and Aaron Taylor-Johnson all pile in to be snapped by the photographer Ezra Petronio, having just attended the Saint Laurent AW26 men’s show held in the vast adjoining atrium.
The atmosphere is electric: Moss and actor Béatrice Dalle rattle off a sequence of unrepeatable showbiz yarns, and everyone is dressed, in true Saint Laurent form, as though they’re about to head to some kind of Eyes Wide Shut bacchanal. Yet it’s still all surprisingly sweet. Perhaps because these talents form a funny kind of family, all gathered around Anthony Vaccarello, creative director of the brand since 2016, and noticeably the quietest man in the room. “I like surrounding myself with artists,” says the 44-year-old Belgian designer a few weeks later when we meet in Saint Laurent’s labyrinthine headquarters in the 7th arrondissement. “In order to tell a story, to develop an image. I always need a personality to inspire a collection. I don’t start from the abstract. I need to latch onto somebody that I know – dead or alive, but somebody real.”
