Saint Laurent’s relationship with Marrakech is nearly as old as the house itself. Dating back as far 1966, the two share an enduring passion. The designer – along with the house’s co-founder and longtime partner, Pierre Bergé – fell hard and fast for the country’s exotic sensibilities and colourful landscapes. On their first trip, they purchased a modest house in the medina named Dar el-Hanch, House of the Serpent, and later set up an iconic museum space in the heart of the city.

Anthony Vaccarello knows of this kinship well, returning the house to its Morrocan heartland for a collection of louche, tailored magic – and desert furs – for SS23. This season, Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky, is on his reading list, a story where desperation, loneliness and desire all coalesce in the plains of North Africa. 

As the sun set on the vast Agafay desert, models circled a desert oasis in sweeping suiting distinguished by deep-cut necklines and sharp military shoulders. The le smoking was the story’s leitmotif, deconstructed and softened into fluid shapes reflective of the soft dunes around, as mesh shirts billowed in the breeze like lonesome tumbleweeds. Heeled boots were rendered in patent leather, scarves jumped from the neck in waves and coats merged into capes like distant, unrecognisable forms on the horizon. And then there was the leather. Soft to the touch and effortlessly supple, the material dressed down slender trench coats or shrouded the neck with thick, jagged collars. 

Desert hallucinations began to kick in and a magnificent ring of fire rose from the oasis water, sizzling a hole in the desert sky – Jodorowsky-esque. Conceived by Vaccarello in collaboration with London-based artist and stage designer Es Devlin, again, this took inspiration from Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky. A metaphor for life’s mystery, perhaps this was a portal into another world. Perhaps we’re already there.