In the dramatic low-light of the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, Anthony Vaccarello’s FW25 Menswear collection for Saint Laurent was a nocturnal meeting of two great minds – Yves Saint Laurent and Robert Mapplethorpe. The connection wasn’t tenuous, Mapplethorpe actually photographed the ads for Saint Laurent’s 1983 Men’s collection. The two men knew each other, if peripherally. On this runway however, they have been brought closer together than ever before. In the centre of the runway, vast gold crystal chandeliers symbolised the Intercontinental Hotel’s ballroom, the venue for Saint Laurent’s Haute Couture collections between 1975 and 2001.

In a very literal gesture towards “business on top, party on the bottom”, the collection’s initial looks paired double-breasted blazers, striped shirts and ties with thigh-high leather waders. The silhouettes were distinctly 80s Saint Laurent meets a darker kink. The sunglasses on every other model brought to mind the revellers in Studio 54, keeping their shades on inside the club to hide the secrets revealed by their pupils. Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker filled the space.

Elsewhere, gorgeous leather coats with wide lapels and tightly cinched at the waist conjured Mapplethorpe’s famed polaroid self-portraits in which he’d wear his almost-trademark black leather jacket. The show notes made the point of how pieces like the ostentatious feathered coats and the double-breasted jackets suddenly felt fascinatingly ripped from their context when paired with the leather boots. It was a daring break of the house codes for Vaccarello, done in a way that brought, what the notes called, a “menacing, seductive elegance.”

Some designers like to say they imagine characters rather than outfits. An interesting question to ask of this collection would be: where are these Saint Laurent boys are going? And, please, can we come too?