A recent reading of Giovanni’s Room, the 1956 novel by James Baldwin, about a white American man in Paris coming to terms with his homosexuality, prompted Anthony Vaccarello’s latest Saint Laurent men’s collection. “I was kind of obsessed by the story, the mood, and imagining a character” caught between desire and disgust, Vaccarello explained backstage. “I like the idea of being in contraction between something very conventional and something very sensual.”
Over the decades reading the book has become a rite of passage for young queer people. According to Baldwin: A Love Story, a new biography og the author, he hoped Giovanni’s Room would be adapted into a film during his lifetime. Nearly 40 years after his death, it may finally come to pass. Vaccarello apparently picked it up at the urging of an acquaintance who is working to secure the movie rights.
The show, which took place once again at the Pinault Collection in the Bourse de Commerce, provided a provocative, impeccable coda for a menswear season that often emphasized rumple and slouch. You will find neither quality in Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, though you will note that the strong jackets he has made such an identifiable part of his brand has been softened at the sides, and made ever so slightly hourglass—not feminine per se, he explained, but boxy like the “that cliché of masculinity” either. Pants had a noticeable swish, wide through the leg with a full break above glossy oxfords.
Printed silk ascots peeked from the collars of crisp shirts finished with ties and from scoop-neck knits, including a chunky saffron sweater that provided one of the lone blasts of color in the otherwise dark collection. As the show progressed, the ascots spilled fulsomely down the chest, accenting looks that combined matched tailored coats and knee-length shorts with stretch patent boots that extended up the thighs, the very picture of sophisticated contradiction.
Vaccarello scored the coup of the menswear season, nabbing Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie for the front row, where he sat among other friends of the brand like Austin Butler and Kate Moss. The phenomenal success of the “gay hockey show” about rivals who fall in love has led to some real-life coming out stories for professional sports players. The queering of Saint Laurent menswear, which Vaccarello has undertaken these last few seasons, could have a similar kind of cultural impact on young fashion watchers, albeit at a smaller scale. That is unless Saint Laurent Productions becomes involved in the making of the Giovanni’s Room film and Vaccarello provides the costumes.
