At Saint Laurent Babylone, the image also learns to be silent

There are places you don't just visit: you traverse them as if entering an idea. Saint Laurent Babylone was like that for me. Not just another store in Paris, nor even a natural extension of a brand I admire, but the physical manifestation of something I had been observing from a distance for a while: the way Anthony Vaccarello has been expanding Saint Laurent beyond fashion, into a territory where art, publishing, photography, cinema, and visual culture coexist. Since 2016, when he was appointed creative director of the house, his work has reinforced this authorial dimension with rigorous, very cinematic modernity.

I came to Saint Laurent first through its image. During Hedi Slimane's years, I was captivated by those black and white photographs, that dry, nocturnal, almost musical tension. Then came another vision: Vaccarello's, more comprehensive, more precise, more ambitious in its dialogue with culture. And Babylone, in the heart of the Parisian Left Bank, is surely one of its clearest forms: a space conceived as a cultural destination and bookstore, curated by him, where everything seems placed with an almost liturgical exactitude.

"A gallery where the brand breathes"

The first thing that impressed me was not a specific object, but the feeling of order. The kind of order that doesn't cool, but refines. The marble, the concrete, the glass, the white light suspended over the tables, the vinyls, the books, the large-format photographs. Nothing was overflowing. Nothing tried to prove too much. Even the luxury seemed contained, polite, sustained by a clear idea of proportion. In other cultural spaces that also fascinate me, there is something more dislocated, more impulsive, more apparently free. Not here. Here, everything responds to a visual discipline that, precisely because of this, is so seductive.

I liked feeling that Saint Laurent does not use art as decoration, but as a language. Babylone is not just a refined showcase: it is a place where the brand transforms its affinities into a program. Exhibitions, special editions, book signings, and meetings have been building an agenda there that mixes artists, photographers, and figures very close to the house's universe. In 2024, for example, the space hosted signings and presentations with names such as Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss alongside Mario Sorrenti, and Zoë Kravitz, in addition to various exhibitions and editorial launches.

And that, up close, is inspiring. Not only because of the beauty of the space, but because of its coherence. For demonstrating that a house can build desire not only through its garments, but also through its discernment. At Babylone, Saint Laurent doesn't just sell objects. It curates a vision.