Saint Laurent Men's Winter 2024 Ad Campaign

Review of Saint Laurent Men’s Winter 2024 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Anthony Vaccarello with Photographer Glen Luchford with models Zeke Lindsey, Vassili Schneider, Thomas LeMaigre, Awar Odhiang, Samuel Elie, Justino Gonzalez

Saint Laurent’s new Winter 2024 Men’s campaign references an iconic moment from the house’s past to create a stunning new exploration of masculinity and desire through centuries of art history.

The imagery references one of the house’s most iconic campaigns from the Alber Elbaz era, the Spring 1999 ad shot by Mario Sorrenti that drew on iconic Renaissance and Baroque paintings but filled them with an utterly subversive spirit that played with notions of sexuality and gender.

Extending this idea, creative director Anthony Vaccarello teamed with photographer Glen Luchford to create the elegantly composed – yet utterly subversive – compositions inspired by the work of master painters through history like Michelangelo and Caravaggio. In lush interiors draped with dark jewel tones and dramatic shadows, characters both fully clothed and completely nude smolder languorously, sometimes meeting the gaze of the viewer and sometimes wrapped up in their own reverie. The eroticism of the nude male form is somehow amplified by the presence of other bodies completely covered in voluminous and beautifully tailored suits, pointing to a nexus of desire as the interplay between concealment and revelation.

This sense of a spectrum or duality of sensuality is further complicated by the women who appear in several of the scenes, wearing the particularly revealing sister collection. In addition to pushing the erotic dynamics of the compositions into excitingly bisexual territory (a territory which, by the way, Michelangelo and Caravaggio lived in themselves), this bold choice to include the women’s collection in the men’s campaign extends the reach of the brand’s design world and deepens its sense of narrative cohesion.

The photographs may be somewhat open-ended, but the beautiful accompanying short film makes no secrets about its narrative of sexual openness and the luxury to explore and indulge. Into the art history references Vacarello and Luchford mix an inspiration from influential 20th-century directors such as Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as perhaps a nod to the tension of youthful longing and aristocratic excesses of Saltburn.

Synthesizing a brazenly contemporary spirit of unabashed sensuality with codes of formality and power drawn from enduring masterworks of the past, the campaign is a gorgeous gallery of erotic dynamics and how they are characterized and captured by craft. It’s also not lost on us that this campaign was released during Pride month, and the images do form a subtle and not-so-subtle ode to the beauty and freedom of loving all bodies. Man or woman, clothed or completely nude – Saint Laurent is a way of seeing.