Anthony Vaccarello is expected to leave Saint Laurent after ten years as creative director, ending one of fashion’s longest current designer tenures. His Spring/Summer 2027 women’s show in Paris on September 29 was widely read as a farewell, though Saint Laurent and parent company Kering have confirmed nothing. No departure, no successor.
The open seat is one of the biggest jobs in fashion, and it resets more than the clothes. A new creative director changes the silhouette on the runway, the faces fronting campaigns, the photographers and stylists around the house, and the casting pipeline that feeds all of it. For models and the people who track them, Saint Laurent becomes a case study in how fast a house can change its image.
Inside the Gold Show That Read as a Farewell
Vaccarello skipped his usual backstage press interviews and sent dark purple flowers with a handwritten note calling the collection deeply personal. “I’ve had this collection in mind for a long time, and I finally felt that this was the right moment to bring it to light,” he wrote. “It’s very personal for me, charged with emotion, so this time I’d rather not say too much and let you experience all its shades.”
Gold carried the collection: trenches, pencil skirts, safari jackets, luncheon suits and cocktail dresses in lamé, organza, guipure lace, chiffon, brocade, jacquard, metallic cotton and gold-leaf-coated latex. Models walked a black runway beneath three oversized gold chandeliers, the Eiffel Tower lit behind them and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 woven into the soundtrack.
Roughly a dozen black looks closed the show, Anja Rubik among them, before Charlotte Gainsbourg stepped onto the runway to perform and the audience rose in an ovation. Vaccarello handed a key-like object to his five-year-old son; a representative described it as a good-luck charm.
A Decade of Sharp Tailoring and Star-Powered Casting
Saint Laurent appointed Vaccarello in April 2016, after Hedi Slimane’s exit. He built a clear signature across the decade: strong shoulders, narrow silhouettes, leather, eveningwear and increasingly cinematic staging, with menswear and womenswear speaking the same language.
His casting doctrine set him apart. Vaccarello declined to chase viral names, favoring what he called “real celebrities who have a real thing,” adding, “Women who have something to say; women with depth.” Long-term muses including Gainsbourg, Zoë Kravitz, Chloë Sevigny, Hailey Bieber and Anja Rubik moved across runway, campaigns and red carpets, blurring fashion and film.
Saint Laurent Productions, launched in 2023, pushed that further: shorts by Pedro Almodóvar and Jean-Luc Godard, three features at Cannes in 2024, Jim Jarmusch’s Golden Lion winner in Venice and Claire Denis’s latest at Toronto.
The Chemena Kamali Question and What Changes Next
No successor has been announced. Industry chatter centers on Chemena Kamali, the Chloé creative director who was Saint Laurent’s design director before leaving in 2023. Her name circulates because she knows the house from inside, and because her softer, romantic register would mark a visible break from Vaccarello’s sharper one.
Whenever an appointment lands, the effects arrive in order: an interim studio team keeps the next collection on track, the first campaign under the new director signals the shift, and the following full season is when casting visibly turns over, changing who opens, who closes and which model profiles the house favors.
Business pressure is real. Saint Laurent sales fell 10 percent in the first half of 2025, Kering has a new chief executive in Luca de Meo, and former Saint Laurent chief executive Francesca Bellettini now oversees brand development at the group. As recently as this summer, Vaccarello said he had turned down offers elsewhere because “Saint Laurent is the ultimate house.” His show notes ended on light and transience: “A light shines all the more brightly because we know it cannot be held.”
