Saint Laurent's blockbuster spring 2019 menswear show was the logical next step in a quest for world domination

Saint Laurent’s business is on a roll. Hedi Slimane, its controversial previous creative director may have left in a puff of dudgeon two years ago, but under Anthony Vaccarello, the 38-year-old Belgian-Italian who seamlessly slipped into Slimane’s Cuban heels in late in 2016, its fortunes continue to rise. Revenue in his first full year there shot up 27.3 per cent.

Unlike most designers who sweep away their predecessor’s blueprint whilst trying to find new ways to interpret their brand’s core codes, Vaccarello seems content to adhere to Slimane’s dramatic make-over, while subtly tweaking it.

And it’s working. Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent may not be as cultish as Slimane’s Marmite take , but? on his watch the label ?has ?put on Kering’s second biggest growth spurt after Gucci. Francesca Bellettini, one of the few female CEOs in fashion, says she wants Saint Laurent's €1.5 billion a year revenue to double, ultimately.

This presumably is why the label was ubiquitous on the red carpet at Cannes last month and why the house moved lock stock and barrel – for one season, at least – to New York, specifically to show its spring 2019 menswear collection in Liberty State Park, on New Jersey’s shore line.

These peripatetic undertakings are not cheap, but have become de riguer among fashion’s bigger players. Last week Gucci and Louis Vuitton showed in Arles and St Paul de Vence respectively. Open air is a given despite the high risks.

It poured with rain in the South of France and the weather was un-seasonally chilly last night in New York. All the better reason to hand out the black cashmere Saint Laurent blankets to the audience (there is an unaudited blanket Armageddon currently unfolding, literally, at fashion shows).

Many of the audience were customers. They’re a type: uniformly dressed in black – the women with long knitting needle legs, in short, perfectly executed skirts and expensive looking high heels, the men, also with thicker knitting needle legs, in perfectly executed skinny jackets or insanely extravagant beaded blousons.

The Saint Laurent silhouette has become an instantly identifiable look masquerading, because it’s black and streamlined, as stealth wealth – and that’s why it’s so clever.

The? State ferry had probably never witnessed a group of passengers as expensively polished as this one (I heard one guest saying that he’d flown to LA to get his buzz cut strimmed).

Mists swirled, the sky darkened, Julianne Moore and Kate Moss, both loyal fans, took their seats (Moore with a new much shorter hair cut) alongside journalists who’d flown in from Europe and Asia and one of the most iconic skylines in the world lit up as the first models walked down the pontoon-catwalk.

This is the second time Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent has taken? on a landmark. The last time was at the Eiffel Tower. But this was his first menswear effort, albeit with a smattering of ten women’s looks (at many points the distinction seemed superfluous). Saint Laurent’s aesthetic has become so gender fluid that women often shop the menswear and get the in-house tailors to alter where necessary.

It wasn’t always obvious that they would need to – the boys in this show were as skinny as the girls and the dark denim drainpipes, narrow smoking jackets (slightly more nipped in and less boxy than Slimane’s), the jewelled tuxedos and bandanas, the leather safari tunics, the jumpers, tucked into high waisted trousers, the perfect sand coloured suede bombers and the lizard cowboy boots (with their mid-height heels) looked perfectly at home on both women and men.

Apart from a few marquee names such as Kaia Gerber, it was often difficult to distinguish either sex. At the after party, on a boat cruise round Manhattan, boys with slicked back hair and glittery eyelids twirled their gilt chained Saint Laurent shoulder bags, while the female models slouched around sans makeup.  

The Saint Laurent silhouette has become an instantly identifiable look masquerading as stealth wealth – and that’s why it’s so clever.

The question then, is why Saint Laurent bothers to stage separate menswear and womenswear shows. Vaccarello says it’s because after two years in the job, he’s finally sufficiently confident in his menswear to give it major catwalk treatment (until now it was only presented to the press via look books).

“Remember this is a house that didn’t really do menswear under Monsieur Saint Laurent," he says. “I based a lot of it on what he wore himself in the 70s?, but without making it too literal."

The reality is that the success of stand-alone cruise shows in their exotic, previously untapped locations is helping to shift luxury merchandise. Creating a rolling roster of experiences for elite customers and journalists is now orthodoxy. How long will it be until rich clients can buy a fully themed fashion vacation?