On an airy, black marble promenade within view of Manhattan’s southernmost tip, Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello unveiled his Spring/Summer 2019 menswear collection. The designer’s latest provocation pulled the swagger and sway of 1970s New York into a congenial state park, where a procession of taut leather jackets, diamond-dusted shirts, and all manner of rakish scarfs and suspenders sauntered across a sterilized space larger than a football field. The very “idea of New York,” as Vaccarello said, was pulled into every seam of a collection that brought to mind the New York of Scorsese and Jarmusch, landscapes where only the strong, and the very cool, could expect to survive. To mark Vaccarello’s first menswear collection for Saint Laurent, Document gathered some our favorite quotes from the designer’s first Document interview to accompany the exclusive behind the curtain reveal of the spring collection.

“Working as a designer is an open career, and I love how it allows me to express myself in many different ways.”

“It’s important to be aware of what surrounds us every day and it’s important to be connected to the world.”

“It seems people are looking for that energy again in Paris. Paris has always been creative, but it just depends on people and whether they want to pay attention to that creativity or not.”