Anthony Vaccarello is expanding Saint Laurent beyond the runway, curating art and cinema, broadening the house’s cultural footprint.
In less than a year, Anthony Vaccarello expanded Saint Laurent far beyond fashion’s boundaries. Three auteur-driven films lit up the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, marking the house’s ambitious foray into cinema. By the following March, his Fall/Winter 2025 show, a sleek parade of velvet-armored tailoring, unfolded beneath the Eiffel Tower. Soon after, in early June, a Saul Leiter retrospective at Saint Laurent Rive Droite underscored Vaccarello’s deepening connection to the art world. Under his vision, Saint Laurent moves fluidly between runway, cinema, and gallery walls.
From Brussels to the Runway
Born and raised in Brussels to Italian and Belgian parents, Anthony Vaccarello enrolled in law school to please his family, yet legal textbooks couldn’t eclipse his creative drive. He soon swapped statutes for sketches, transferring to the city’s acclaimed La Cambre art academy. His 2006 graduate collection, a risqué homage to adult-film icon La Cicciolina, clinched the Hyères Grand Prix and landed on Karl Lagerfeld’s radar, earning him a stint in Rome designing leather and fur at Fendi.
By the early 2010s, Vaccarello had moved to Paris and opened a compact Marais studio, where razor-sharp tailoring, vertiginous slits, and safety-pin flourishes quickly earned him a cult following. In 2012, Anja Rubik propelled his breakout by wearing a slashed white gown of his design to the Met Gala. The buzz convinced Donatella Versace to commission a Versus Versace capsule in 2013 and, two years later, appoint him creative director. That stint proved brief: when Kering offered him the helm of Saint Laurent in 2016, he closed his namesake label and stepped onto fashion’s grandest stage.
“Maybe I should have been worried, but I wasn’t – I knew it would be a continuation of what I did with my brand.”
—Anthony Vaccarello, on taking the Saint Laurent job (Harper’s Bazaar, 2017)
Honoring and Updating a Legacy
Stepping into Yves Saint Laurent’s shadow could have intimidated even the boldest designer, but Vaccarello met the challenge with calm confidence. He literally re-rooted the house in Paris by moving its atelier back from Los Angeles, then set about bridging past and present in his work. Rather than reinvent the wheel each season, he pored over the archives, the smoking tuxedos, opulent florals, peasant blouses, seeking ideas to tweak for today’s world. His philosophy was simple: respect the essence of Saint Laurent’s legacy, but don’t get lost in it.
“During the ’90s, Yves never gave in to trends, and I find that moving.”
—Anthony Vaccarello, W Magazine (2025)
Vaccarello’s runway track record proves homage and innovation can walk hand in hand. His Spring/Summer 2017 debut lit the Trocadéro with 300,000 bulbs as crystal‑embroidered minis flashed past the Eiffel Tower; Fall/Winter 2018 spliced prim tweeds with latex pencil skirts, twisting bourgeois codes. A neon‑lit water runway made Spring/Summer 2019 unforgettable, while the moon‑dusted desert set for Marrakech menswear Spring 2023 showed his taste for spectacle. Fall/Winter 2024’s “Collant” collection fixated on fragile hosiery and diaphanous slips, deliberately anti-hype in an age obsessed with commercialization. Revenue has more than doubled during his tenure, yet those high-concept shows still revolve around refined tailoring, daring cut-outs, and fearless spirit.
Muses and Modern Icons
Vaccarello has assembled a clique of muses that bridges generations: his long-time muse Anja Rubik, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Zoë Kravitz, and Hailey Bieber mingle with original house icons like Catherine Deneuve and Betty Catroux. What unites this tribe isn’t social media clout, but attitude, each member embodies a facet of the Saint Laurent spirit that fuels Vaccarello’s creativity. He has even deliberately recreated the intimate “little groups” that once orbited Yves himself, bringing that sense of family into the present-day house.
In an age of influencers and paid brand ambassadors, Vaccarello favors authenticity over hype. Plenty of stars wear Saint Laurent on the red carpet, think Angelina Jolie or Nicole Kidman, but those partnerships tend to form organically from mutual admiration. He pointedly avoids the hollow practice of throwing money at celebrities with no real connection to the house.
“I have the feeling that fashion became too commercial,
if you can sell and have real style, that’s bingo for me.”
— Anthony Vaccarello, GQ (2022)
It’s a stance that keeps Saint Laurent’s image credibly cool. When Vaccarello dresses a celebrity, it’s because their persona genuinely meshes with the brand’s ethos, not merely for publicity. Little wonder his post-show parties in Paris, often at the house’s own HQ with friends like DJ Honey Dijon spinning, have become the stuff of legend, drawing creative luminaries and amplifying the rock-chic mystique that surrounds the Saint Laurent crew.
Beyond Fashion: A Cultural Vision
Vaccarello hasn’t hesitated to extend Saint Laurent’s reach beyond the runway, reshaping the very definition of a luxury brand. A lifelong film cinephile, he launched Saint Laurent Productions in 2019 to produce original films, a bold new direction for a fashion house. Within a few years, the company was premiering its movies at Cannes, collaborating with celebrated auteurs like Pedro Almodóvar and David Cronenberg. These cinematic forays aren’t about marketing, but about securing Saint Laurent a place in cultural history that will outlast the whims of fashion seasons.
“Film has always been something I was really, really into… to escape a bit and to dream.”
— Anthony Vaccarello, Vogue (2024)
Vaccarello also pioneered Saint Laurent Rive Droite, transforming boutiques in Paris and Los Angeles into innovative cultural destinations. These dynamic spaces blur retail and gallery lines, hosting exhibitions of photography, art installations, and curated design objects. Notable shows include rare black-and-white images by Saul Leiter and exclusive furniture pieces by Charlotte Perriand. With Rive Droite, Vaccarello has further solidified Saint Laurent’s status as an influential cultural hub, deeply integrated into contemporary art and design.
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Unconcerned with short-term profits, he pursues these artistic ventures to enrich the house’s soul rather than its bottom line. Most of these projects, from art shows to indie films, are guided more by intuition and passion than by sales targets. By redefining what a fashion label can do, Vaccarello is wielding Saint Laurent not just to sell clothes, but to forge a lasting cultural legacy of his own.
