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Ten years, a €3.3 billion sales peak and a move into cinema leave Saint Laurent’s next designer with more than collections to inherit.
Gold gave way to black at Anthony Vaccarello’s final Saint Laurent show. Presented in Paris on September 29, the Spring 2027 collection moved from metallic clothes to dark evening looks beneath chandeliers near the Eiffel Tower. W Magazine The sequence now has a definite place in the house’s history: the last runway presentation of a creative directorship that began in 2016.
Saint Laurent has confirmed Vaccarello’s departure after ten years, with new creative leadership to be announced soon. Reuters He leaves behind more than a recognizable silhouette. His tenure connected fashion collections with film production, cultural programming and a much larger business. Understanding that inheritance means looking beyond both the farewell show and the headline sales figure. The next appointment concerns a house whose activities expanded alongside its image, not simply a vacant position at the end of a catwalk.
Signal. What Happened: Anthony Vaccarello is leaving Saint Laurent after ten years. When and Where: Confirmed October 9, 2026, following his September 29 Spring 2027 show in Paris. Reuters Source: Kering’s dated statement and financial reports. Why It Matters: The succession covers fashion, culture program and a film production operation. What Remains Open: The departure statement does not identify a successor, an appointment date or Vaccarello’s next role.
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The Kering announcement is dated October 9 in its downloadable press release. It thanks Vaccarello for his contribution but gives no reason for the separation, no next destination for him and no name for his replacement. Kering Those omissions set the limits of the confirmed story. Neither a celebratory final show nor an executive statement supplies evidence of the private discussions behind the decision.
Kering chief executive Luca de Meo praises Vaccarello’s creative view and standards. Saint Laurent president and chief executive Cédric Charbit emphasizes desirability, image and cultural influence. Kering The statement presents the departure as the beginning of another chapter without explaining what that chapter will look like. That leaves room for a substantive assessment of the work, but not for presenting succession speculation as an appointment.
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The difference matters because a creative director’s departure changes how recent collections are interpreted. Details that looked like anniversary gestures can acquire the weight of a farewell. That retrospective reading can be persuasive, but it should not replace chronology. The show happened first; the formal announcement followed. Its meaning has changed because the available information has changed, not because every garment necessarily contained a coded explanation of the decision.
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The final collection made the house’s familiar garments unusually luminous. Saint Laurent’s own presentation describes gold as the connecting idea, revisiting safari jackets, trenches and wrap skirts through Vaccarello’s perspective. LinkedInThese were recognizable categories rather than an entirely new wardrobe. The transformation came through surface, proportion and the insistence on one family of color, turning practical shapes into clothes made to attract light.
In W’s runway review, the materials range from lamé and brocade to guipure lace and latex covered in gold leaf. The account describes three chandeliers above a black runway and a progression toward black at the finish. W Magazine Seen together, those choices made the set and collection operate as a single composition. The architecture of the presentation was part of the clothes’ impact.
That unity should not obscure the actual design. A jacket can look ceremonial because of its material while retaining the pockets, closure and proportions associated with everyday dressing. A narrow skirt can supply restraint beneath a generous upper silhouette. Vaccarello’s final offering repeatedly worked within that relationship between familiar construction and heightened appearance. The resulting spectacle was not detached from the wardrobe underneath it.
The ending also carried a historical reference. Contemporary reviews connected the gold-to-black sequence with an inversion of Yves Saint Laurent’s Fall 1991 Rive Gauche finale. Vogue It placed Vaccarello’s last presentation in conversation with the founder rather than outside his history. As a farewell, the effect was less a declaration of independence than a final demonstration of how differently an established vocabulary could be arranged.
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Vaccarello was appointed on April 4, 2016, after developing his own label and working at Versus Versace. The appointment announcement described his tailoring and the balance between masculine and feminine elements as reasons he suited the house. Kering His brief was therefore not to make Saint Laurent recognizable from nothing. It was to develop a business and design identity that already had substantial momentum.
His earlier record helps explain the choice. A graduate of La Cambre in Brussels, Vaccarello won the grand prize at the Hyères fashion festival in 2006 and the ANDAM Fashion Award in 2011. He founded his own label in 2009, following two years at Fendi. Kering He arrived with experience developing an independent identity as well as working within established organizations, two different demands that a heritage house brings together.
Kering’s financial tables put that starting point in focus. Saint Laurent recorded revenue of €973.6 million in 2015 and €1.22 billion in 2016. Kering also recorded a sixth consecutive year of comparable sales growth above 20 percent for Saint Laurent in 2016. By 2022, annual revenue reached €3.3 billion. Kering The peak was approximately 2.7 times the arrival-year figure. Using the previous year’s revenue, it was approximately 3.4 times as large. Both comparisons describe considerable expansion, but they are not the same calculation.
That is why the shorthand that sales nearly tripled needs a stated baseline. The 2016 figure also covers a transition year, not twelve months of merchandise conceived entirely under the new designer. Calendar-year accounts and collection schedules do not line up neatly enough to isolate one person’s contribution. The strongest supported description is that Saint Laurent expanded dramatically during his tenure, rather than that every additional euro can be attributed to him alone.
The peak was profitable as well as large. In its 2022 results, Kering reported €1.019 billion in Saint Laurent recurring operating income, with a margin above 30 percent. Kering That financial weight explains why the succession is more than a question of runway preference. A distinctive creative identity had become attached to a substantial source of earnings for the group.
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Saint Laurent’s history gave Vaccarello a particularly rich starting point. The house’s museum dates the founder’s first women’s tuxedo to Autumn 1966, explaining that it adapted masculine dress codes rather than simply copying a man’s suit. Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris The distinction remains useful when considering later collections. Reinterpreting the archive does not require reproducing its proportions unchanged; it can mean returning to the question that made the original garment significant.
For Spring 2025, Vaccarello drew on the founder’s personal wardrobe, showing broad tailoring with shirts, ties and substantial glasses. Vogue’s contemporary review described double-breasted jackets and wide trousers, followed by richly colored evening clothes. Vogue That collection complicates the idea that his Saint Laurent was exclusively about exposed skin or black eveningwear. Authority could come from being fully dressed, with accessories and layers making the silhouette more emphatic rather than less.
His broader approach also became visible away from the runway. The Paris Rive Droite space opened in 2019 and reopened after renovation in February 2025. Kering describes it as curated by Vaccarello, combining fashion with exhibitions, books, design and other cultural activities. Kering The physical setting offered another way to encounter his selection of references, without requiring a runway invitation or a purchase from the latest collection.
The renovated interior was developed with Donald Judd Furniture and incorporated the artist’s furniture designs. Kering’s account also identifies Saint Laurent Babylone, a Paris bookstore devoted to books, music and photography, as part of the wider concept. Kering These were places with addresses and programs, rather than ideas confined to campaign imagery. They gave the house opportunities to present its cultural interests at a slower pace than a runway show allows.
Those activities matter because they make the meaning of creative direction more concrete. Choosing an exhibition or the objects show beside clothing can influence how that clothing is understood. The store becomes a setting for taste, not merely inventory. That does not make culture programming interchangeable with design, but it helps explain why replacing Vaccarello involves more than assigning the next season’s sketches to another person.
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The clearest expansion arrived with Saint Laurent Productions, launched in 2023. The company describes it as a registered subsidiary conceived by Vaccarello, putting film production inside the house’s activities rather than limiting its involvement to dressing actors. saintlaurentproductions.ysl.com The organizational distinction is important. A fashion campaign can borrow cinema’s appearance; a production company participates in getting films made.
Its early projects included Strange Way of Life, directed by Pedro Almodóvar and presented in the official selection at Cannes in 2023. The house’s announcement also specified costumes by Vaccarello. saintlaurentproductions.ysl.comClothing therefore remained part of the relationship, but the project extended beyond placing a product in front of a camera. The film existed as a work with its own director, story and audience.
The production catalogue subsequently included Emilia Pérez, The Shrouds and Parthenope. The official Emilia Pérez page records its 2025 Oscars for supporting actress and original song. saintlaurentproductions.ysl.com Those credits provide a tangible record of the division’s reach. They should not be mistaken for evidence that film production generated a particular amount of fashion revenue, or that awards explain the commercial performance of the wider house.
Instead, the significance is structural. Vaccarello helped establish another place where Saint Laurent could exercise judgment about artists and projects. A successor will inherit a company that already has those relationships and released works in its history.
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The €3.3 billion figure belongs to 2022, not Vaccarello’s departure year. Kering subsequently reported Saint Laurent revenue of about €3.2 billion in 2023 and €2.9 billion in 2024. Kering The decline belongs in any account of the decade, just as the earlier expansion does. Leaving it out would turn a financial history into a highlight reel and obscure the circumstances surrounding the next appointment.
Distribution changes complicate the picture. In 2023, directly operated retail sales rose 4 percent on a comparable basis while wholesale revenue fell 26 percent as that channel was being reduced. Kering Total revenue therefore cannot be read as a simple vote on one collection. How much a house sells to outside retailers, and how much it sells through its own network, affects the reported result.
By 2025, annual revenue was approximately €2.6 billion, down 8 percent as reported and 6 percent on a comparable basis. Recurring operating income was €529 million. Kering These are different measures: revenue records sales, while operating income reflects earnings after operating expenses under the company’s reporting definition. Neither is a valuation of the brand itself. Keeping those terms separate makes the scale of the slowdown easier to understand.
The annual decline also concealed improvement toward the end of 2025. Fourth-quarter sales were stable on a comparable basis, with North America growing and Western Europe returning to growth. New products helped shoes and women’s ready-to-wear, according to Kering. Kering That sequence provides useful context for the subsequent recovery: the change in direction was developing before the departure announcement arrived.
The latest available direction was more encouraging. In its first-half 2026 update, Kering said Saint Laurent had returned to growth, citing collection demand, retail execution and improved product availability. Kering That is the company’s assessment, not a completed annual result. It also means the departure should not be presented as occurring against an uninterrupted decline, or as proof that the creative work had ceased to attract customers.
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The next creative leader will inherit several timelines at once. There is the founder’s archive, the collections produced over the past decade, the films already released and a retail business with its own operational requirements. The opportunity is not simply to preserve or reject Vaccarello’s image. It is to decide which relationships between those activities remain useful, and where another designer can contribute something genuinely distinct.
Continuity need not mean repetition, just as change need not mean erasure. A new sil can coexist with an established handbag business, and a different cultural program can build on spaces that already exist. Those are possibilities, not disclosed plans. The important distinction is between the resources a successor receives and the choices that person may eventually make with them.
For now, Kering’s statement promises a forthcoming announcement of new creative leadership. Vaccarello’s last collection remains the Spring 2027 presentation shown on September 29, 2026. Kering The runway has an ending; the succession announcement still has no name attached.
