At Monday night’s Saint Laurent runway show in Berlin, plenty of front row guests pointed their phones at the latest evolution of Anthony Vaccarello’s seductive menswear collection. But among the slick VIPs who swanned into the Neue Nationalgalerie dressed in Anthony Vaccarello’s dramatic new designs, there was not one traditional fashion influencer.
“Never,” said Vaccarello backstage shortly before the lights went down. “Even with the [women’s shows], there are no influencers. We pay attention to that.”
Influencers are, of course, as inescapable a part of the modern fashion industry as sneakers. But when it comes to generating hype—what he would call desire—through the grand marketing complex of fashion shows, Vaccarello has a different vision than many of the creative directors atop other multi-billion-dollar brands . As the sun dipped over the German capital, around 200 guests quaffed champagne in the monumental atrium of the Mies van der Rohe-designed modern art museum. There were no Internet stars among them, nor even any triple-A-list celebrities—the big game of front rows that are increasingly coveted by brands hoping to stand out in the cutthroat social media arena.
Instead, many in the crowd would only be familiar to those who have followed Vaccarello’s year-long rise to new critical and commercial heights in menswear. Last July, the Belgian-Italian designer unveiled a career-defining collection in Marrakech, introducing a fresh vision for Saint Laurent menswear that echoes his romantic and elegant women’s designs. And as he’s broken away from the rocker archetypes he had inherited from predecessor Hedi Slimane, Vaccarello has designed a scene around the house with the same precision with which he tailors the shoulder of a jacket.
Call it the cult of Saint Laurent: a devilishly-dressed inner circle that might be the most exclusive in fashion. “Everyone’s like family,” the actor and skater Evan Mock, a YSL regular attending his fourth show, said shortly before taking his seat on a Barcelona stool. Nearby, Spanish actor Manu Ríos, wearing a floor-grazing leather duster, caught up with songwriter Conan Gray, as OG Yves Saint Laurent muse Betty Catroux mingled with Vaccarello muse Anja Rubik.
Every creative director assembles a crew of friends and fans of their work. Before the social media era, it didn’t really matter who attended runway shows outside of buyers and members of the press. But now, millions of people discover fashion via their favorite celebrities’ social media feeds. Brands across the board are investing more resources in making sure they have the right people at their shows. Most brands gravitate to the same types of stars, namely celebs who are dominating broader pop cultural conversations (the cast of The White Lotus, for instance, were everywhere last season.) Vaccarello prefers early-career actors, directors, and rising Gen Z musicians. Consequently, Saint Laurent has developed a reputation for being the toughest ticket to get in whatever town it shows. (On more than one occasion, influencers with packed fashion week itineraries have grumbled to me that they are iced out of the YSL world.)
Vaccarello, who says he doesn’t consider Instagram follower accounts when approving invites, is deeply involved with maintaining this (very attractive) group of devotees. Río, for one, appears in Pedro Almodóvar short Strange Way Of Life, the first film released by Saint Laurent Productions, the latest brand extension by the cinema-obsessed Vaccarello. Now that he’s become a film world player, Vaccarello essentially presides over a closed loop between his collections and Hollywood’s next generation. The actors, the idea goes, will appear in his movies, wear Saint Laurent on their red carpet tour (as Ríos did alongside Vaccarello and Almodóvar in Cannes), and then attend the brand’s shows and parties for years to come.
Nobody seems to enjoy the arrangement more than the ambassadors themselves. “I’ve seen more friends who I’ve wanted to see for a long time here than any other show I’ve been to,” said Mock, who was cloaked in a gauzy cagoule hood. The main requirement to join the club, besides making work that Vaccarello admires, appears to be a deep sense of ease in plunging shirts, flowing trousers, and high-heeled boots. “It’s crazy how he has an eye for people,” Wednesday star Percy Hynes White, told me, adding that he had never been invited to a fashion show before Saint Laurent reached out last year. “Anthony takes people and he says, They would look good in my clothes, they’re gonna come along for the ride.” White told me that as the models breezed by, he was taking mental notes for future fits.
There was a lot for a young, curious style star to learn from in the exquisite balance Vaccarello struck between the strong and sharp, soft and sensual. Backstage, Vaccarello confirmed that “there’s one message” from the show, and that he hoped guests would leave with a defined silhouette in their mind. To wit: a series of oversized jackets, borrowed from his most recent womenswear show, that were sculpted with shoulders that brought to mind a Mies-designed cantilever—simple, powerful, the lines accentuated by the narrow high-waisted trousers and vertiginous boots below.
Said Vaccarello: “I started with the continuation of the last woman collection in February, because she was very Parisian, but she was two-steps from Berlin, in a way…She could also be in a film from Fassbinder. And from that, I started to build the collection around those shapes from the woman, putting on the men…starting to play with the code of femininity and masculinity so that you don't know the limit between them.”
Without the jackets, about half the models revealed little covering their shoulders at all. Vaccarello appears determined to usher into menswear a golden age of blouses: some silks draped slinkily across the body, others wrapped the torso in sensual sheer fabric, and still more fell away from the neck in intricate and beguiling shapes. “I like the mix between those very dressy jackets and the more delicate silhouette,” Vaccarello said. White agreed, saying the models “all looked so cool, and so gorgeous.”
After the 50-look finale, the cult members were the very first to jump to their feet in applause. As the crowd moved toward a 200-person reception, several others echoed Mock’s belief that they’re part of something more than just a brand marketing scheme. “It does feel like a family,” Hynes said, looking around at his fellow blouse believers. A starlet making her way to the candlelit dinner table chimed in: “It’s cringe to say it, but it’s like my Saint Laurent family, for real. I see them more than my actual family!”