Anthony Vaccarello understands an awful lot about Saint Laurent after designing the label for a near-decade now—how time flies when you’re having fun and turning out rocking collections. But maybe the thing he gets most is that YSL is, and always has been, about the tension that arises between oppositional forces. It’s masculine vs. feminine, hard vs. soft, restraint vs. excess, couture vs. the street, and the decorous vs. the indecorous. Just to underscore that point, his spring 2026 collection—resort in YSL parlance—is an ode to the magic that happens when you explore what at first glance looks like opposing elements of the YSLverse, namely, late ’70s inflected sportif chic, and delicate, gossamer, satin-y and lacy lingerie dressing. (Plenty of these looks are accessorized with strappy high sandals adorned with cherries.)
For the collection’s athletic vibe, which feels new for Vaccarello, a way for him to think about ease and comfort without sacrificing, you know, actual design rather than banal branding—it utilizes color-blocking (scarlet and vermillion, teal and ivory, salmon pink and electric blue) in the likes of tissue-weight technical nylon for roomy cagoules, anoraks, and track-tops with extended shoulderlines and shirred waists. These might then be worn over his lace-trimmed underwear-as-outerwear pieces, the cami-shorts or slips with undulating asymmetric hems, in delicate pink or eau-de-nil or the lightest shade of kingfisher blue it’s possible to imagine.
There are also other distinct Saint Laurent-isms employed here: airy blouses with gargantuan bows, a precursor of the crisp shirting version worn with biker leathers he recently revealed at his summer 2026 runway show in Paris. Other times, Vaccarello got busy knotting satin ribbons to be-bow sinuous long dresses with draped décolletés and deep side-slits. A lot of these evening looks are in navy, giving a dark and unexpected sobriety to the froth; like I said, Vaccarello gets the tension. Those looks also give a bit of a nod to an era of YSL that Vaccarello loves, the ’90s, when the label (and its founder) wasn’t perhaps looked at with quite the same love and longing as its ’70s and ’80s heyday. But like much of what’s here, it’s just another way in which Vaccarello can go deep into Saint Laurent and keep making it distinctly his own.
