The leather jacket hanging in the window on Avenue Montaigne is cut like a dinner jacket

The leather jacket hanging in the window on Avenue Montaigne is cut like a dinner jacket. Notch lapels, a single button, no visible hardware except the zip at the cuff. It costs €4,200. You could wear it over a T-shirt to dinner or a silk shirt to a wedding, and in either case you would look like you understood something fundamental about getting dressed. That is Saint Laurent in a single garment.

If you are thinking about buying into the house, you are likely weighing up a few things: the price, the silhouette, whether the logo feels like too much or just enough. All fair questions. Saint Laurent trades on a specific image—sharp, nocturnal, a little dangerous—and that image has held for sixty years because it was never a pose. It was Yves Saint Laurent himself, chain-smoking in his studio at three in the morning, reworking a sleeve until it moved the way he wanted. The clothes were personal before they were commercial.

Founding and the Le Smoking revolution

Yves Saint Laurent opened his own house in 1961, aged twenty-five, after a brief and turbulent stint at Dior. His first collection was soft, romantic, full of bows. The second was harder. By 1966 he had put women in tuxedos—Le Smoking, a dinner jacket cut for the female body without compromise. It was not an androgynous look. It was a sharp look, one that assumed women might want to wear the same clean lines men had claimed for themselves.

The house built its reputation on that tension: between the masculine and the feminine, between structure and fluidity, between day and night. Saint Laurent showed safari jackets in 1968, sheer blouses in 1971, peasant skirts that same year. He borrowed from Mondrian, from Morocco, from the street. The through-line was not aesthetic—it was attitude. The Saint Laurent client was not waiting for permission.

Hedi Slimane and the skinny silhouette

By the time Hedi Slimane arrived in 2012, the house had been through several creative directors and a buyout by Gucci Group. Slimane rebranded it from Yves Saint Laurent to Saint Laurent Paris, dropped the Rive Gauche line, and built a new vocabulary around one idea: the skinny silhouette. Narrow trousers, cropped jackets, sharp shoulders, high boots. It was divisive. Purists hated the name change. But the clothes moved.

Slimane's Saint Laurent was nocturnal in a different register—less Studio 54, more Sunset Boulevard. The leather was thinner, shinier. The tailoring was tighter. He cast rock musicians in the campaigns and shot them in Los Angeles at night. It worked because it was consistent. You knew what you were buying: a silhouette that looked good in a basement bar at two in the morning, and also at breakfast.

That era gave us the Wyatt boot—a Cuban-heeled Chelsea in black leather that became shorthand for the whole aesthetic. It is still in the collection. So is the teddy jacket, a blouson in wool with a shearling collar that retails around €3,500 and has not changed shape in a decade. Both are entry points if you want the Slimane-era codes without the archival hunt.

Anthony Vaccarello and the house today

Anthony Vaccarello took over in 2016. He had worked at Versus Versace and built a small line under his own name, known for sharp tailoring and a certain unapologetic sexiness. His Saint Laurent is less about the street and more about the night out after the show. The silhouette has loosened slightly—trousers are wider, jackets longer—but the attitude has not softened. Vaccarello likes a plunging neckline, a high slit, a shoulder that sits just off the body. His references are cinematic: Helmut Newton, Betty Catroux, the same 1970s Saint Laurent archive that everyone mines, but he cuts it sharper and shorter.

The house under Vaccarello has leaned into its leather goods in a way that earlier eras did not. The Loulou bag, a quilted shoulder bag with a chain strap and a gold YSL logo, starts around £1,400 and is now one of the most recognisable pieces in the lineup. The Kate bag, a small tassel-front shoulder bag, is another. Both are evening bags that work during the day if you are the sort of person who does not separate the two.

Vaccarello has also kept the tailoring programme alive. A single-breasted wool jacket in black or navy runs about €2,200. A tuxedo jacket, still cut in the Le Smoking tradition, is closer to €2,800. The trousers that go with them are high-waisted, slightly flared, and they fall in a way that suggests the house still employs people who understand how cloth should move.

What to buy first

If you are starting with Saint Laurent, start with one of three things: a leather jacket, a pair of boots, or a bag. The leather jacket is the clearest statement. The L01, a biker jacket in grained calfskin, is the house's most copied piece and costs around €4,500. It is heavy, stiff when new, and will outlast most of your wardrobe. The alternative is the L17, a blouson style that sits at the hip and works over tailoring. Both are black. Both are cut slim.

The Wyatt boot, as mentioned, is the safest entry into footwear. It is not a safe boot—it has a 4cm heel and a sharp toe—but it is the one that has been in continuous production the longest. Around £645. The alternative is the Lukas boot, a lace-up combat style that Vaccarello introduced and has kept in rotation. Slightly less rock and roll, slightly more wearable if you are not ready to commit to the heel.

Bags are where the house makes its margin and where the logo does the most work. The Loulou and the Kate are both recognisable, both evening-leaning, both widely available. If you want something quieter, the Sac de Jour—a structured tote in grained leather—has been in the lineup since 2013 and does not carry a visible logo unless you buy the monogram version. It starts around £1,900 for the small size and works as a daily bag if you are comfortable carrying something that costs as much as a used car.

Prices and what you are paying for

Saint Laurent is expensive. A cotton T-shirt with a small logo will cost you £350. A plain black wool jumper is closer to £600. You are paying for the logo, yes, but you are also paying for a specific cut and a specific weight of cloth. The T-shirts are cut long and slim, in a 180gsm cotton that holds its shape. The knitwear is mostly Italian, in merino or cashmere, and it is finished to a standard that assumes you will notice if a seam is off by a millimetre.

The tailoring is where the house still justifies its pricing on craft rather than branding. A two-button jacket in wool grain de poudre—the same cloth Yves Saint Laurent used for his tuxedos—is cut with a natural shoulder, a suppressed waist, and a skirt that flares just enough to balance the silhouette. It costs about €2,400, and it is made in Italy by tailors who have been working with the house for years. You could find a similar cut elsewhere for less, but you would not find the same cloth or the same finishing.

Where the house stands

Saint Laurent today occupies a strange position. It is not a heritage house trading on archive reproductions, though it references its own history constantly. It is not a streetwear brand, though it has sold plenty of logo hoodies. It is not quiet luxury, though the tailoring is as good as anything coming out of Milan. It is, instead, a house that has committed to a single idea—sharp, nocturnal, unapologetically sexy—and executed that idea at a very high level for a very long time.

If that idea appeals to you, the house will make sense. If it does not, no amount of craft or heritage will convince you to spend £645 on a pair of boots with a heel. Saint Laurent is not trying to be everything. It is trying to be one thing, done well, and it has been doing that thing since 1961.

The leather jacket in the window is still there. Someone will buy it this week. They will wear it for ten years, and in ten years it will look better than it does now. That is the point.