three monumental chandeliers recreate yves saint laurent’s historic paris ballroom at trocadéro

BUREAU BETAK RECREATES SAINT LAURENT’S HISTORIC BALLROOM IN PARIS

For Saint Laurent’s Spring Summer 2027 womenswear show, Anthony Vaccarello turns to one of the house’s most recognizable spatial memories. Staged at the Trocadéro in Paris, the runway is framed by three monumental chandeliers conceived with Bureau Betak, recalling the ballroom of the Hôtel InterContinental where Yves Saint Laurent once presented his haute couture collections. What was once an enclosed, ceremonial setting is blown open to the city, with the Eiffel Tower completing a backdrop that hardly needed much help.

Rather than reconstructing the historic room wall by wall, the scenography extracts its essential ingredients: theatrical lighting, a formal runway, symmetry, and the warm glow of gold. Suspended above the models, the oversized chandeliers effectively create a ceiling without walls, marking out a temporary room in the open air. Their scale shifts the reference away from reproduction and toward abstraction, turning an interior design code into a piece of urban scenography.

THREE MONUMENTAL CHANDELIERS FRAME THE TROCADÉRO RUNWAY

The ballroom reference is closely tied to the history of the house. Yves Saint Laurent used the Hôtel InterContinental as the setting for his couture presentations, surrounding the collections with chandeliers, ornate interiors and a deliberately heightened sense of occasion. Vaccarello keeps that formality intact, but transports it into a very different architectural condition: an expansive public setting where Paris itself becomes part of the set.

Against the monumental proportions of the Trocadéro, the three chandeliers operate almost like pieces of temporary architecture. Their suspended silhouettes establish points of light above the long runway while leaving the surrounding cityscape visible. The result balances nostalgia with spectacle, without turning the whole thing into a period room. Instead, Bureau Betak scales up a familiar Saint Laurent motif until it can comfortably compete with one of the most photographed views in Paris.

GOLD LINKS ANTHONY VACCARELLO’S SET TO YSL ARCHIVE

Gold runs through both the collection and the environment. Lamé, brocade and metallic surfaces pick up the warm illumination of the chandeliers, allowing the garments to become moving extensions of the set rather than objects simply passing through it. Under the lights, different tones of gold shift from reflective and almost liquid to darker, heavier surfaces, reinforcing the material dialogue between runway, clothing and scenography.

The installation ultimately treats the Saint Laurent archive less as something to reproduce than something to enlarge, relocate and slightly exaggerate. A ballroom becomes an outdoor room, chandeliers become urban-scale objects, and the Paris skyline takes the place of decorated walls. For a collection built around gold, restraint was perhaps never going to be the point. Bureau Betak and Vaccarello instead make the historical reference visible from across the square.

project info:

name: Saint Laurent Spring Summer 2027 womenswear
brand: Saint Laurent | @ysl

creative director: Jonathan Anderson | @jonathan.anderson
set design: Bureau Betak | @bureaubetak
location: Trocadéro, Paris, France