Saint Laurent: The Paris House Founded in 1961

Saint Laurent: The Paris House Founded in 1961

Saint Laurent is the Paris house Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé opened on December 4, 1961. I go through the accessories and shoes worth a look.

Collage of shoes styled with city, runway and evening outfits that capture the Saint Laurent mood

Accessories

Accessories sit downstream of a house built on borrowing hard tailoring codes from menswear and repurposing them for women, a habit that started with Le Smoking in 1966. The pieces here carry the same graphic confidence, small objects that still read unmistakably like the house. It is a category that has expanded a lot since Hedi Slimane's early 2010s rebrand simplified the name to just Saint Laurent.

Cassandre belts, silk scarves and frames

A further stretch of small leather goods and hardware pieces that lean on the label's long standing logo, designed by the graphic artist Cassandre back in the house's founding years. These pieces tend to be the most direct, wearable entry point into the brand for anyone not ready to commit to a full look. They carry the house codes without much fuss.

Logo belts and angular sunglasses

This grouping continues the theme of compact, logo forward pieces, the kind that have kept Saint Laurent culturally present through several creative director changes. Whoever is at the helm, the accessory line has remained a reliable place for the brand to restate its identity. It is a good gauge of how the house is reading its own history at any given moment.

Sculptural eyewear and a leather wallet

The final accessories grouping rounds out smaller items that fill in a wardrobe already anchored by bags and shoes elsewhere in this edit. Saint Laurent has always used accessories to keep the house visible season to season, a strategy that predates the current creative director and will likely outlast him too. These pieces are built to be worn constantly, not saved.

Shoes

Footwear carries forward the same sharp, slightly severe silhouette that has defined Saint Laurent since the Rive Gauche years, when the house first proved ready-to-wear could carry couture level attention to line. Pointed toes and high, thin heels are a recurring house signature here. It is a category where the brand's original attitude, more confident than pretty, is easiest to spot.

Slingbacks, sculptural heels and loafers

A second run of footwear that leans into flatter, more wearable silhouettes alongside the sharper heels found elsewhere. Even the softer styles keep the house's tailored, slightly androgynous edge, a throughline from Yves Saint Laurent's original menswear borrowing. The range suggests a house still comfortable moving between severity and ease.

Bags

Bags have become one of the house's most visible categories under Anthony Vaccarello, who has led creative direction since 2016, and the pieces here range from structured top handles to slouchier shapes. The house's original 1960s logo, still in use today, appears throughout as a mark of continuity rather than novelty. It is a category built to be immediately recognizable at a glance.

Shoulder bags, totes and compact shapes

Further bag styles extend the same hardware and proportions found across the house's leather goods, evidence of how consistently Saint Laurent has managed its visual identity across six decades and several designers. These are pieces designed to be carried daily rather than saved for evenings. The house's continuity here is deliberate, not incidental.

Silk blouses and tailored outerwear

This grouping widens into ready-to-wear and other categories that carry forward the tailoring instincts Yves Saint Laurent brought from his years at Dior. The clothes lean into precise shoulders and a controlled silhouette, a legacy of a founder who spent his career putting masculine tailoring codes onto women's bodies. It is dressing with a clear point of view.

Jackets, statement jewelry and silk skirts

A further stretch of the current collection, showing how the house's ready-to-wear has evolved under successive creative directors while keeping a consistent tailored backbone. What changes season to season is proportion and mood, not the underlying discipline. It is recognizably the same house across very different design eras.

Eveningwear, tailoring and denim layers

Additional pieces continue the label's long running interest in eveningwear and controlled, body conscious cutting, a thread that runs from the 1960s through to today's collections. Saint Laurent has rarely strayed from dressing with a sense of occasion, even in its more relaxed pieces. This section reflects that range.

Cashmere layers and small leather goods

The final grouping rounds out the edit with pieces that show the breadth of a house now generating close to three billion euros a year in sales under Kering ownership. It is proof the label has scaled well past its 1960s couture house origins without losing its tailored, slightly rebellious identity. There is enough here to build several distinct looks from one label.

A mood with historical weight

Saint Laurent's throughline, menswear tailoring reworked for women, has survived Tom Ford's glamour, Hedi Slimane's rock and roll edit and Anthony Vaccarello's current sleeker era, which says something about how sturdy the original idea was. That consistency also means the house can feel more like a mood than a wardrobe of surprises season to season. If you want tailored, slightly severe glamour with real historical weight behind it, it delivers reliably. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together YSL Loafers and Breitling Watches.