Style & Grooming

Saint Laurent Heads to a Malibu Beach for Its Menswear Show

Anthony Vaccarello held his Spring/Summer 2020 show in Los Angeles yesterday evening. Here’s everything you need to know

  1. What was it? The Spring/Summer 2020 Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello show.
  2. Where was it? A sandy beach in Malibu, California. Literally on the coast – the waves were lapping against the catwalk.
  3. Why should I care? Because it will have been one of the most major shows of the season, which has only just begun.
  4. Who was there? The star of the house’s new campaign, Keanu Reeves, recent Another Man cover star Vincent Gallo, Laura Dern and Miley Cyrus, who Saint Laurent dressed for the Met Gala last month.
  5. What were the clothes like? Dark, glitzy, bohemian and inspired by Mick Jagger and Serge Gainsbourg.
  6. What did the designer say about it all? “It started after meeting Mick Jagger for his upcoming tour, he showed me his wardrobe and I was particularly attracted by the details, the colours, the attitude.”
  7. What pieces are we lusting over? The shirting, at once glamorous and relaxed, with a north African influence (Vaccarello also cited Marrakesh as a reference); and the tailored trousers, which were elegant and beautifully cut.

A vast black runway ran the length of a Malibu beach yesterday, providing a suitably dramatic setting for Anthony Vaccarello’s Spring/Summer 2020 collection for Saint Laurent, of which the backdrop was simply the Pacific Ocean’s rolling waves as the sun set. Earlier in the day he said that the collection was Marrakesh – where the house’s namesake spent much of his life – reimagined in 21st-century Los Angeles, a city the current designer goes to often for his own sense of escape. Sweeping wide-leg trousers, djellaba-style shirting and opulent suiting conjured the city Saint Laurent loved; while cut-off denim shorts, skinny leather pants and unbuttoned silk shirts, knotted at the midriff, reflected the beachside bohemian glamour of LA itself. The collection’s muse, though, was from neither locale: Vaccarello cited Mick Jagger as the collection’s driving force, having been granted a look into the musician’s clothing archive earlier this year (he will outfit Jagger for the Stones’ upcoming US tour). “For this collection, I was thinking about something sensitive: satin shirts, Mick’s style in the 70s,” Vaccarello said. “You didn’t think he was dressing like a woman, because he was so sure of himself, so confident that he could wear anything.”