Saint Laurent opens Paris Menswear with mist, gold and flesh
Vaccarello turned Saint Laurent’s menswear opener into a veil of mist, gold and exposed skin, using absence to make restraint feel charged.
Anthony Vaccarello opened Paris Men’s Fashion Week with one of his most stripped-back Saint Laurent menswear shows yet, and he made minimalism look anything but plain. On Tuesday, June 23, 2026, at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, the designer wrapped 41 looks in billowing water vapor, flashes of gold and glimpses of flesh, setting the house’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection against a mood that felt equal parts disciplined and dangerous.
Vaccarello’s show notes framed the collection around “refusal” and “the luxury of absence,” and that was exactly the tension on the runway. The tailoring stayed clean and severe, but the styling kept catching the eye with skin, sheen and metallic interruption, a reminder that Saint Laurent’s sensuality rarely needs ornament to register. Against Paris’s extreme heat warning, the mist did more than create drama. It worked like an atmospheric counterweight, cooling the room while making the clothes feel more elusive, and therefore more desirable.
The fog came from Fujiko Nakaya’s Cloud #07156, a 16-minute water-based smoke sculpture on view at the Bourse de Commerce as part of the group show Clair-Obur, also rendered Clair-Obsur. Vaccarello turned that installation into part of the collection’s grammar, so the runway read like an art environment as much as a fashion presentation. The reference points sharpened the mood further: Tina Chow, Marguerite Duras and Mr. Ripley gave the lineup its polished, slightly dangerous edge, the kind of cultural code Vaccarello has used to keep Saint Laurent feeling modern without ever abandoning the house’s old charge.
The front row underlined the show’s pull. Madonna, Charli XCX, Kate Moss, Lila Moss, Connor Storrie, Austin Butler, Debi Mazar, Yung Lean, Rami Malek, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jaafar Jackson, Arca, Gabbriette, Amelia Gray, Kento Yamazaki, Chen Zheyuan, Ahn Hyo-seop, and James and Martin of CORTIS filled the room with the kind of celebrity density Saint Laurent still commands on opening day. Vaccarello has led the house since 2016, and the night reinforced why his Saint Laurent menswear remains one of Paris’s most closely watched tickets: it knows how to pare things down without losing the erotic voltage that made the label matter in the first place.
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