Saint Laurent’s Darkly Opulent Men’s S/S'22 Show In Venice

Anthony Vaccarello staged his first Saint Laurent show with an audience since the pandemic in a purpose-built art installation by Doug Aitken on a small island in Venice. Here, British Vogue’s fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen reports on the five things to know about the show.

Doug Aitken created an art installation for the show

On a grassy Venetian island some 20 minutes by boat from San Marco, a large mirrored structure appeared on the horizon. It looked as if a spaceship had landed there, a sight as mind-boggling as the floating city of Venice itself. Commissioned by Saint Laurent, the crystalline construction was created by the American artist Doug Aitken as part of the Biennale of Architecture, but for one July night only, it served as the stage for Anthony Vaccarello’s spring/summer 2022 men’s collection – his boldest to date.

The set was an environmental reflection

The show was Saint Laurent’s first with an audience since the pandemic, and in many ways, Green Lens – as the art installation was called – embodied the environmental epiphanies that hit Planet Earth along with Covid-19. In its reflective glory, it was an otherworldly element plonked down in nature, which had, in turn, started to overtake it. Plants and trees grew through its floor, while alien lights – lilac and icy blue – shone from the ceiling in a constant light show between the mirrored walls and the green Venetian lagoon. Doug Aitken, who dubbed it “a living artwork,” called Green Lens “a celebration and inquiry into the future.” Located on Isola della Certosa, it will be open to the public throughout July.

The collection created conversations between time

Like its stage, Vaccarello’s collection was an out-of-time-and-space experience. On paper, it was founded in Victorian codes, but with the opulent backdrop of Venice’s city centre fresh in the recollection of guests – which included Hailey Bieber – it felt like a time-bending voyage through Renaissance carnivals, masked Baroque balls, Victorian goth dreams, the glam rock decadence of the 1970s, and the goth concerts of the ’90s. Vaccarello took inspiration from the late ’70s and early ’80s collections of Yves Saint Laurent, transforming the master’s pyjamas and robes into a wardrobe fit for a pirate spaceship, forever suspended between environments and eras.

It was fashion for a new subcultural youth

Presented on a sylphlike cast of boys with long romantic locks or bleached hair, who were roaming the canals of Venice in the days leading up to the show like some teen goth invasion, Vaccarello’s collection was a rich, dark dream for a new generation discovering the magnetism of Victoriana through a digital forum. Where the glam rockers, New Romantics, and the goths who followed suit often moved within set subcultural dress codes, the darkly-inclined youth of the social media age curate their looks more freely, remixing goth, cyber and hip-hop codes with historical references and – as Vaccarello’s capes suggested – even codes from the realm of haute couture.

The gloomy teenager is back

In this re-emergent time when fashion shows hit your dormant senses from every angle, the Saint Laurent experience summed up the sensory overload we’re all going through after the pandemic. Vaccarello’s tension between time and space was a fitting image of our approach to fashion – and life – in a moment where those very senses have been so confused. It also portrayed a more familiar tradition: the eternal idea of the gloomy teenager, who externalises his emotions towards the world through his wardrobe. It might be something to which the climate-conscious Covid-19 generations can relate. And in any case, it’s a universal feeling.