Following its long-awaited return to Paris Fashion Week earlier this year, Saint Laurent’s whistle-stop global menswear tour continued on June 12 after it landed in Berlin to present its Spring/Summer 2024 men's collection inside the capital’s Neue Nationalgalerie.
One of Berlin's most renowned cultural and artistic venues, the Neue Nationalgalerie first opened its doors back in 1968 and has since housed works by famous names like Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Barnett Newman, to name only a few.
On June 12, though, the artist in question was Saint Laurent's artistic director Anthony Vaccarello, who reprised and developed recent YSL collections to present the house's Summer 2024 menswear collection.
Like previous seasons, Saint Laurent Summer 2024 was awash with sharp but roomy silhouettes. Tailoring was loose but not over the top, with high-waisted flute pants joined by body-skimming satin tank tops, and familiar motifs met with more eye-catching patterns, like re-proportioned polka dots and leopard prints.
Vaccarello is making a habit of taking Saint Laurent to more unorthodox locations to showcase his collections. The house's Berlin takeover comes hot off the heels of a recent venture to Marrakech's Agafay desert for Spring/Summer 2023, that after similar far-flung shows in New York and Los Angeles, plus a presentation in Venice in July 2021.
While showing in Germany's Gray City might not be quite as luxurious as the aforementioned, it isn’t unheard of for luxury brands to show there.
Back in 2021, Daniel Lee’s Bottega Veneta controversially took over Berghain in the midst of COVID-19 for a secret show that was followed by an even more controversial after-party at Soho House Berlin.
With Summer 2024, Vaccarello continues to show that even after seven years at the Saint Laurent helm, he's far from finished. And what better place for an artistic director, designer, and visionary of architecture to show his latest masterpiece than inside Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie.
