“It's not such a bad thing to be a muse,” Lou Lou de la Falaise once said, and she should know. She was of course the uber muse: Someone who Yves Saint Laurent, whom she was doing the muse-ing for, was eternally inspired by, influenced by, looked to for what might feel gorgeous and ineffable and just right at any given moment. Her own look was the textbook definition of la boheme : soft, diaphanous, ruffled, heaving with eclectic and bold bijoux . Her professional Saint Laurent counterpart, the night to her day, as it were, her sister in style, was Betty Catroux, who could rock a YSL tux or a saharienne jacket like absolutely no other—and someone who was just as much a muse for Yves Saint Laurent as de la Falaise.
Yes, I am getting to the point, I promise; there is indeed a reason for this quickie history lesson, because it feels like, in spirit and in style, both these women are present in Anthony Vaccarello's spring 2025 collection. It is a triumph of soft gossamer dressing—what we have here is a virtual ode to the dress, from short, smocked, and off-the shoulder to strapless, sinuous, and all the way to the floor—and the saharienne jacket reinterpreted to strong effect. It's a combination that's a gorgeous homage to the YSL of the 1970s: From the tumbling tiers lifted from the house's archives circa 1977 to the masculin/feminin tension of that house-classic jacket, now swaggering, strictly belted, round-shouldered, and toughened by being cut from black or chestnut leather.
