PARIS — The next designer at Saint Laurent has already been selected and is expected to focus on women’s daywear, menswear and high-end leather goods as the Paris-based house plows into underpenetrated markets like Asia, and especially China.
That’s what equity analysts were told Friday morning after Kering revealed the departure of the brand’s star designer Anthony Vaccarello.
“The decision was driven by the longer-term prospects for Saint Laurent and is unrelated to any recent financial performance of the brand,” Barclays analyst Viktoria Petrova wrote in a research note following the sell-side call.
“Because of the current skew to carry-over leather goods, Kering expects no disruption to the Saint Laurent product pipeline from the creative transition,” she added, characterizing the forthcoming handover as “well-planned.”
Luca Solca, luxury analyst at Bernstein, expressed a more skeptical view.
“One could argue that after so many years, Vaccarello could be replaced in the interest of newness at Saint Laurent,” he told WWD. “But given the poor track record Kering has accumulated in appointing creative directors (Sabato De Sarno at Gucci, Alessandro Michele at Valentino), this in my view adds problems to problems.”
In his view, the exit of Vaccarello comes at a difficult time for the French group since “Gucci has yet to find a convincing direction, Balenciaga is having its own share of problems, and Alexander McQueen is going through a major restructuring.”
That said, he characterized Saint Laurent as a “very good brand, that has developed materially since Kering (then PPR) had acquired it more than 25 years ago. Look at its business in beauty under L’Oréal.”
Friday’s announcement came on the heels of a Paris Fashion Week dominated by speculation that the Belgian designer would bow out after an acclaimed 10-year tenure.
Vaccarello’s all-gold spring 2027 show — the collection marching under three monumental chandeliers and in the shadow of a twinkling Eiffel Tower — felt like a swan song, official or not.
The Kering statement said Vaccarello “played a key role in Saint Laurent’s development, helping to strengthen its identity and influence across the worlds of fashion and culture,” and adding that it would soon unveil its new creative leadership.
Chemena Kamali, currently Chloé’s creative director, is widely expected to succeed Vaccarello and is no stranger to the house, having served as women’s ready-to-wear design director under Vaccarello from 2016 until 2023, when she landed the top job at Chloé.
“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Anthony for his contribution to Saint Laurent over the past 10 years,” Luca de Meo, chief executive officer of Kering since September 2025, said in Friday’s statement. “Through his creative vision and exacting standards, he has contributed to strengthening the enduring influence of one of France’s greatest couture houses, as we embark on a new chapter in its history.”
Cédric Charbit, president and chief executive officer of Saint Laurent, also “warmly” thanked Vaccarello for this dedication to the house.
“During his tenure, Anthony took Saint Laurent on a remarkable trajectory, elevating the house to the forefront of desirability and image, while accomplishing exceptional work both creatively and through his cultural impact,” he added.
The prospect of a Vaccarello exit was viewed with a jaundiced eye by some fashion insiders, given the Belgian designer’s large fan base, and multiple signs of its fruitful collaboration.
The house orchestrated a host of magazine covers and features this year linked to Vaccarello’s 10-year anniversary at the house, and was on the cusp of releasing a slick, 90-minute documentary about the designer’s winning approach, produced by Terminal 9 Studios.
The Lyst Index, a ranking of fashion’s hottest brands and products online, had Saint Laurent in its top five for the last 10 quarters.
Vaccarello is to receive the International Designer of the Year trophy at the 2026 CFDA Fashion Awards on Nov. 2 in New York City, and he is one of six nominees for Designer of the Year at this year’s Fashion Awards, a fundraiser for the British Fashion Council, scheduled for Nov. 30 in London.
Kering, parent of Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Brioni, McQueen and several jewelry houses, no longer breaks down revenues by brand except for Gucci, but noted that Saint Laurent returned to growth in the first half of 2026.
“The house delivered a solid performance in North America and in Western Europe and benefited from strong client demand, as the new collections continued to gain traction,” it said in a statement last July.
At comparable exchange rates, 2025 revenues at Saint Laurent slipped 6 percent in 2025 to 2.64 billion euros, versus a 19 percent drop for Gucci.
A designer partial to the hot-blooded, daring side of fashion, Brussels-born Vaccarello studied sculpture at La Cambre, and came onto the international fashion radar in 2006 when he won first place at the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography for his collection inspired by Italian porn star La Cicciolina.
He subsequently went on to work at Fendi and in 2009 launched his namesake collection in Paris, earning a reputation for racy, abbreviated dresses and skirts. Two years later, he scooped the ANDAM fashion award, and in 2013 was recruited by Donatella Versace to rev up the Versus brand.
Once settled into Saint Laurent, he became one of Paris Fashion Week’s most formidable showmen, erecting gobsmacking sets at the foot of the Eiffel, installing a monumental waterfall one season, a giant hedge of hydrangeas in the house’s Cassandra logo the next.
He evoked the essence of Saint Laurent with strong-shouldered tailoring, meaty leather jackets and faux furs, bold colors, wispy cocktail dresses, hulking costume jewelry and killer heels, usually concentrating each show on a particular silhouette or juicy slice of brand lore.
Unusual for a French megabrand, he almost never featured handbags on the catwalk — a wallet at most — although the brand sold many Sac de Jour, Icare, Amalia and 5 à 7 models.
WWD broke the news last February that the brand quietly recruited Johnny Coca, one of the industry’s most prominent and accomplished handbag designers. He previously worked for Louis Vuitton, Celine and Mulberry.
Vaccarello kept an iron grip on Saint Laurent’s image — party photos were always in black and white only — while also widening its cultural affiliations, most dramatically by establishing Saint Laurent Productions in 2023 to produce short and feature-length films by the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar and Jacques Audiard.
In its short life, the production company has already multiple international awards for “Emilia Pérez” and “Father Mother Sister Brother.”
Vaccarello also established Saint Laurent Editions, specializing in books, fanzines and fine art, with a dedicated retail/gallery space dubbed Saint Laurent Babylone on the Left Bank of Paris.
His inner circle included the likes of Madonna, actress Zoë Kravitz and Connor Storrie, models Kate Moss and Anja Rubik, singers Rosé and Charlotte Gainsbourg, plus such legendary figures from the days of Yves as Catherine Deneuve and Betty Catroux.
The designer is known primarily for his women’s designs, though he recently plied more energy into Saint Laurent menswear, staging intimate shows at the Pinault family’s Bourse de Commerce art museum, and drawing inspiration from the founder’s signature style, and his womenswear collections.
Considered one of the holy grails of Paris fashion, Saint Laurent owes its prestige and fame to a founder who once had such a tight trip on fashion that if he made a slight change in a hemline or a subtle shift in a waistline, the repercussions rippled around the globe.
Yves Saint Laurent is often cited as the inventor of ready-to-wear through the launch in 1966 of his Rive Gauche collection. He became known for beatnik fashions, safari jackets, his landmark Ballets Russes collection, his unparalleled sense of color combinations, the artistry of his cut, designer denim and the launch of a significant fragrance and beauty business with a designer name.
Successors to the legendary couturier, who retired from couture in 2002 and died in 2008 at the age of 71, also included Alber Elbaz, Tom Ford, Stefano Pilati and Hedi Slimane — who logged two tenures: heading up the label’s Rive Gauche Homme collection in the late ’90s, and then returning from 2012 to 2016 for a vast “reform project” that included abbreviating the brand name.
It is understood Kering plans to build on the foundation left by Vaccarello, also spying additional opportunities in jewelry.
At the group’s Capital Markets Day last April in Florence, de Meo told analysts and press that “the next chapter is how to reawaken and reinvigorate icons, to transform them into iconic products that go beyond fashion cycle.”
In addition, Saint Laurent is aiming to double its sales to VICs by 2030, and to double its business in Asia within the same time frame.