Anthony Vaccarello Leaves the Saint Laurent He Rebuilt

Anthony Vaccarello is leaving Saint Laurent after a decade as creative director, parent company Kering said on October 9, 2026. The Belgian designer had led the French house since 2016, and the group said it will soon name new creative leadership.

Saint Laurent is growing again in 2026. Kering still told analysts the next designer should fill gaps the glamour years left open: women’s daywear, menswear, high-end leather, and China.

A Gold Finale Closed the Decade

The spring 2027 womenswear show went out on September 29, 2026, at the Trocadéro, with the Eiffel Tower lit behind three chandeliers. Fashion critic Cathy Horyn counted 49 gold looks, then ten gowns in black. Charlotte Gainsbourg left her seat, took a microphone, and sang on the runway as the models returned. Vaccarello came out, embraced her, and closed a tenure that had begun in April 2016, when he was 36.

THE LAST TEN DAYS

1. September 29, 2026: Stages the all-gold spring 2027 show in Paris, with Gainsbourg on the runway.
2. October 8, 2026: Alexander Skarsgård wears a gold-foil suit and clear plastic dress shoes from the final menswear collection.
3. October 9, 2026: Kering confirms the exit and Vaccarello posts a highlight reel on Instagram, captioned “A bientôt.”

Ten days after the gold show, Kering announced Vaccarello’s departure in a short statement. Luca de Meo, Kering’s chief executive since September 2025, thanked him for ten years of “creative vision and exacting standards.” Cedric Charbit, president and chief executive of Saint Laurent, said Vaccarello had taken the house “to the forefront of desirability and image.”

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Anthony for his contribution to Saint Laurent over the past ten years. 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.

Luca de Meo, CEO of Kering, October 9, 2026 statement

The house will “soon announce its new creative leadership.” Vaccarello did not issue a personal statement beyond the Instagram reel, which opens with him signing a letter “Love, Anthony,” then cuts through runways, campaigns, and muses including Connor Storrie, Chloë Sevigny, and Catherine Deneuve.

Why Kering Changed Saint Laurent’s Creative Director

Kering told sell-side analysts on October 9 that the decision was driven by longer-term prospects for Saint Laurent and was unrelated to recent financial results. Barclays, in a note on that call, said the next designer will be asked to build women’s daywear, menswear, and high-end leather goods, and to gain ground in China and Asia, while carry-over bags keep product flowing through the handoff.

KERING’S BRIEF FOR THE NEXT DESIGNER

• Women’s daywear: The house wants clothes that sell beyond evening and the red carpet, a category Barclays flagged as under-represented.
• Menswear: Vaccarello found a language here late, and Kering still sees the category as unfinished business.
• High-end leather goods: Bags carry the till; the next designer is being hired to push that side, not only the showpiece suit.
• China and Asia: Barclays named both as less penetrated regions for the brand, a gap the glamour years did not close.

Because so much of the current offer is carry-over leather, Kering told the same analysts it expects no break in the product pipeline. That is a commercial way of saying the next name can change the runway without emptying the stores. At a Capital Markets Day in April, de Meo had already told investors the next chapter was about turning icons into products that last beyond a fashion cycle.

The timing sits inside a wider shuffle. Gucci ended its collaboration with Sabato De Sarno on February 6, 2025, and appointed Demna artistic director from July 2025. Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta also changed creative leads last year. Francesca Bellettini, the Saint Laurent chief who hired Vaccarello four days after Hedi Slimane left, became president and chief executive of Gucci on September 17, 2025. Saint Laurent was the last big Kering house still identified with one designer from the boom years.

Sales Hit €3.2 Billion, Then Slipped

Kering’s own accounts show how far the house travelled, and where the air came out. In 2023, Saint Laurent’s revenue reached €3.2 billion (about $3.6 billion), with recurring operating income of nearly €1 billion and a margin above 30 percent. Two years later the figures were smaller, even as the house held a 20 percent margin.

SAINT LAURENT UNDER VACCARELLO, IN KERING’S FIGURES

Kering put Yves Saint Laurent’s 2025 revenue at €2.6 billion. Directly operated stores were down 6 percent; wholesale fell 14 percent at comparable rates. In the fourth quarter, sales were stable, with North America still growing and Western Europe back in positive territory, helped by shoes and women’s ready-to-wear. Gucci, the group’s largest brand, did worse over the full year, at €6 billion, down 22 percent as reported and 19 percent comparable.

The first half of 2026 changed the mood. Kering said Saint Laurent confirmed renewed momentum and returned to growth, with a sequential pickup in every region except Asia Pacific. Client demand for new collections was strong among both very important clients and the core. That is the awkward part of the exit: the house is expanding again, and the parent is still rewriting the job.

Kering reports third-quarter sales on October 22, 2026. The group no longer breaks out full-year house figures except for Gucci, so the next public read on Saint Laurent will be thinner than the peak-year releases.

The Red-Carpet Suit He Put on Hollywood

When Vaccarello arrived, he had never made men’s clothes. Slimane’s skinny rock wardrobe still hung over the atelier. In 2022 he said he felt pressure starting men’s “because he used to do men’s, and he used to do really good men’s.” The first standalone men’s show came in 2018: 1970s New York, shirtless models, silver body paint. The volume jumped in 2022, on the sand in the Agafay desert near Marrakech, where Yves Saint Laurent had lived and where his ashes were scattered.

That’s why it took me time to find my own language.

Anthony Vaccarello, on starting Saint Laurent menswear, 2022

Once he found it, Hollywood put it on. The moodily soft suit, with the kinky extras around it, became a red-carpet default. Austin Butler, Hailey Bieber, Zoë Kravitz, Rami Malek, and ROSÉ all wore the house in public. In January, at the height of Heated Rivalry mania, Connor Storrie joined that list and later starred in a summer commercial that spread far beyond fashion feeds. A Saint Laurent show under Vaccarello was readable in one look: a black coat, huge shoulders, a lot of leather, and a camera angle that felt like a film still. That repetition is harder to replace than a new print.

He also built a film arm. Saint Laurent Productions backed independent features, including Emilia Pérez, which played in competition at Cannes in 2023. The cultural reach was part of the commercial pitch. So were the stores. Kering now puts the network at more than 300. Ambassadors treated the exit as a personal goodbye, circulating old front-row clips and thank-you notes in the hours after the statement.

He got there from a small Brussels-born label he started in 2009 with Arnaud Michaux, his partner, and from Versus Versace, which he led before Saint Laurent called. He won the ANDAM Fashion Award in 2011, when Pierre Bergé, co-founder of the house, presided over the prize. He closed his own line when he took the job, and later said he started on May 1, 2016, after a meeting with Bergé’s heirs in spirit, François-Henri Pinault and Bellettini. He called Saint Laurent the holy grail, and he did not expect the call so soon.

From Tom Ford to Hedi Slimane, the House Starts Over

Saint Laurent has a habit of hiring a strong-willed designer, letting that person remake the silhouette, then starting again. Yves Saint Laurent founded the house in 1961 with Pierre Bergé, retired from couture in 2002, and died in 2008. Each director after him reset the image rather than tending it.

CREATIVE DIRECTORS AFTER YVES SAINT LAURENT

In 2018 Vaccarello told an interviewer that everyone already had a vision of what Saint Laurent should be. He knew some people would love whatever he did and some would hate it, the same as with Slimane and Pilati, and he said he kind of loved that. The house is about to test the line again. A new creative director will inherit carry-over leather, a celebrity wardrobe, and a brief that asks for the categories his decade treated as supporting acts.

Who Replaces Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent?

Saint Laurent has not named a successor. The working rumor is Chemena Kamali, creative director of Chloé since 2023, who ran women’s ready-to-wear at Saint Laurent under Vaccarello from 2016 until she left for Chloé. Chloé and its owner, Richemont, did not immediately comment. Kamali is German, born in 1981, trained at Central Saint Martins, and spent earlier years at Chloé under Phoebe Philo and Clare Waight Keller. She knows how a Vaccarello idea became a garment. That is not the same as being offered the job.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The timeline: Kering said on October 9, 2026, that new creative leadership will be announced soon, with no date attached.
• The brief: Barclays said the next designer will be measured on daywear, menswear, high-end leather, and Asia, not on copying the gold finale.
• The pipeline: Carry-over leather is supposed to keep shelves full while the studio changes hands.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Kamali: Industry talk names her; neither Saint Laurent nor Chloé has confirmed a move.
• Vaccarello’s next post: He has not announced a new house, a revived label, or a film job.

A second corridor rumor has pointed at Pierpaolo Piccioli. De Meo, asked on September 30 about separate talk that Piccioli might leave Balenciaga, called those rumors he did not want to comment on. Until Kering puts a name on paper, the only job description that exists is the one analysts wrote down on Friday.

He Left No Next Job on the Record

Vaccarello has not said where he goes next. In a 2024 interview he said the only thing you can do, after a run like this, is start something completely different. House ambassadors filled the silence with old footage. The Instagram reel did the rest: a signed letter, a gold decade, a French shrug. “A bientôt” means see you soon. It does not name a date, a house, or a successor.

The clothes from that last Paris show are already in production. The gold-foil suit Skarsgård wore on October 8 is already on a carpet. What Kering wants now is a designer who can sell Tuesday as well as premiere night, and who can do it in China. That is a different assignment from the one Vaccarello finished under the Eiffel Tower.