Adopting the Armour of Desire
Review of Saint Laurent Fall 2026 Men’s Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
In a surprise show post Paris fashion week men’s, Anthony Vaccarello returned to the Pinault Collection in the Bourse De Commerce, where the central rotunda played host to the designers fall collection.
Today’s show affirmed that the sartorial sea change for menswear in 2026 will be one of timeless tailoring, and for better or worse, is a reflection of the embrace of traditional (read conservative) dress codes. But just as Vaccarello presented a swathe of Saint Laurent suiting that stood out from the rest of the season, he also used the moment to explore what masculinity means to the House through ‘intimacy, vulnerability [and a hint of] eroticism’.
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Restrained Desire, Challenging Convention, Masculine Tensions
The trouser suit has become fertile ground for Vaccarello to subvert the rules around the sanitized silhouette, and its counterparts. Spring 2022 came with high-cut tailored shorts and sheer bohemian blouses, fall 2023 dramatic pussy-bow and draped-front blouses, and fall 2025’s thigh-high boots were adopted by actors Pedro Pascal, Wei Daxun, and king of experimenting with kink on the red-carpet Alexander Skarsgård.
Saint Laurent under Anthony Vaccarello has doubled-down on straddling the line between honouring the legacy of the house with impeccable suiting. Which through both relaxed and streamlined permutations, manages to retain their relevance for modern men. While his reframing of feminine-leaning shapes open the House up to a more diverse, and younger, male customer, one that embraces ‘personal expression’ sans sensationalism.
James Baldwin gay literature classic Giovanni’s Room from 1956 provided the jumping off point for today’s collection. Centred around a Parisian love affair between an American expat and an Italian bartender, the book was rejected at first, for the implausibility that Baldwin could imagine (or have the audacity to imagine as a black man from Harlem) such a scenario despite having lived in the Paris since 1948. Exploring a time when being an outwardly gay man could result in an arrest for soliciting, one of the many ways to survive was to assimilate in a pseudo-costume that helped them to present as a ‘conventional’ heterosexual man. It also created a constant tension between desire, intimacy and honest expression of masculinity.
For fall, the designer embraces these tensions with the familiar trope of the morning after and the ‘the ritual of transforming ourselves from our most naked selves to being dressed to re-enter the world’ as described in the show notes. Long, lean silhouettes with strong shoulders in inky black act like cloaks against the night. Ultra-low scoop neck sweaters act as a reimagining of the unbuttoned shirt and sheer second-skin layers eroticise with ‘being exhibitionist’ according to the designer. The expert precision of the house’s signature tailoring offered an ‘armour like strength’, as well as a way to perform conventionalism as a sartorial survival strategy.
The tensions within Giovanni’s Room and its portrayal of ‘sexual attraction’ while challenging convention also played out in the robe-like coats layered over bare chests and the exposed boxer shorts under a double-breasted coat, both depictions of a rush to leave in the early dawn. Vaccarello’s restrained eroticism in this collection is what we can expect to see worn by the aforementioned male actors who have dared to use the red-carpet to upend convention in recent years. While his glossy leather trench coats, paired with equally high-shine thigh-high boots which nod to the world of kink are likely to be picked up by the cast of the gay hockey series ‘Heated Rivalry’ i.e. Connor Storrie, François Arnaud, and Robbie Graham-Kuntz who sat front row at the show and represent a glimpse of Saint Laurent’s future consumer.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
Anthony Vaccarello’s fall 2026 Saint Laurent show continued his ongoing work to use the trouser suit as a silhouette of subversion. Always honouring the House’s exceptional tailoring while expanding what modern masculinity can look like through a queer lens, without ‘sensationalised spectacle’.
Inspired by James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the collection explored the tension between desire and cloaking via convention: long-lean silhouettes with strong shoulders created an armour, while ultra-low scoop knits, sheer second-skin layers, robe-like coats over bare chests, and glimpses of exposed boxers suggested at the “morning after” uniform we use to re-enter the world after-dark. The result was restrained eroticism that still embraced ‘personal expression’, cementing Vaccarello’s ability to make suiting feel timeless and subversive all at once.
