That golden goodbye has now been made official: Anthony Vaccarello is stepping down as creative director of Saint Laurent, the French luxury house announced today, bringing an end to one of the most successful, defining tenures in modern fashion.
In her review of what was confirmed today as the designer’s final show for the house last week in Paris, critic Nicole Phelps wrote that Vaccarello “is as strong-willed as he is soft-spoken, a designer resolutely unwilling to bend to trends, and just as firm in his disregard for the democratization of fashion that is one of the dominant storylines of the season.” She concluded it, presciently, with the famous Robert Frost line: “Nothing gold can stay.”
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Today’s official announcement officially brings to a close a tenure whose ultimate timescale and massive success few would have bet on when it first began back in April 2016. Vaccarello was only 36 years old when then-Saint Laurent CEO Francesca Bellettini appointed him as creative director, a high-pressure appointment that came just four days after the sudden departure of his predecessor, Hedi Slimane.
At the time, Vaccarello was already exceptionally well regarded within the global fashion industry, following his sensually powerful and sharp output as creative director of Versace’s second line, Versus, which he had overseen since 2015 and collaborated with closely since 2013. Dating back to 2009, he had also successfully led his own small but steadily growing eponymous label, a venture he ultimately chose to close down after accepting the heavy responsibilities of the top job at YSL. Another major feather in his cap was his prestigious win at the 2011 edition of the ANDAM Fashion Award, an honor that was at the time under the presidency of Yves Saint Laurent co-founder Pierre Bergé.
Under Slimane’s four-year tenure as creative director, YSL brand revenue had experienced explosive growth, rising sharply from €354 million in 2011 to €974 million in 2015. In business terms alone, Slimane’s immense commercial footprint seemed like huge Chelsea boots for Vaccarello to step into. Yet, in extremely short order, the Belgian designer not only filled them but expanded upon them immensely, successfully cresting the massive wave of growth that swelled across the luxury sector between 2016 and 2023, even managing to weather the broader economic slowdown of the Covid-19 pandemic. On his watch, Saint Laurent revenues more than tripled, soaring to an astonishing €3.3 billion in 2022. While Kering’s full-year 2025 financial figures later placed Saint Laurent’s valuation at €2.6 billion amid a cooling luxury market, an impressive sliver of a little more than 30 percent—amounting to €1.019 billion—remained recurring operating income.
Vaccarello carved out that remarkable path to success partly through a unique mix of progressive creativity drawn from his formative upbringing in Brussels and rigorous education at La Cambre, combined with an instinct for the provocatively propulsive that he inherited from his Sicilian parents. As he thoughtfully explained to Vogue Australia back in 2015: “I have the Belgian way to construct clothes, to be more into construction and deconstruction of clothes, and maybe my Italian side is the sexy side.”
Another indispensable factor in his enduring success was his masterful image-making. His visionary approach widened YSL’s scope far beyond Slimane’s brilliant signature subcultural documentarianism, successfully reinstating Yves Saint Laurent as the most quintessentially Parisian modern fashion house of all. His very first Trocadéro runway show, set against the glittering backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, instantly became Vogue Runway’s most-viewed show of the entire season. Beginning with the Fall 2019 collections, Vaccarello’s designs began not only to recall Yves Saint Laurent’s historic gestures, but to actively expand upon and modernize them, pushing and testing the absolute extremes of the founder’s iconic silhouettes and design codes to generate a nearly unbearable degree of visual tension.
That extraordinary creative trajectory ultimately reached its emotional conclusion with Vaccarello’s Spring 2027 ready-to-wear show on September 29, which was staged precisely 10 years and two days after his initial Saint Laurent debut. Set beneath the towering presence of the Eiffel Tower and illuminated by three massive, candlelit chandeliers, he presented a powerful lineup of 49 looks rendered entirely in varying shades of gold before closing the presentation with 10 striking looks in black. Sahariennes, trench coats, razor-sharp pencil skirts, rich brocades, and breathtaking evening dresses revisited the storied house vocabulary with the amplified rigor that had gradually become Vaccarello’s ultimate signature. Notably, this color sequence deliberately inverted the finale of Yves Saint Laurent’s Fall 1991 Rive Gauche collection, which had famously ended in gold: this time, it was a profound fade to black.
Even before the runway presentation officially began, the evening carried the unmistakable atmosphere of a valedictory, as rumors of his impending departure had been circulating freely since the summer months. In a break from tradition, Vaccarello unusually declined to participate in standard preview interviews ahead of the show. Instead, he offered guests black calla lilies accompanied by a personal note describing the collection as deeply personal and emotional. Miles Davis’s haunting soundtrack to Louis Malle’s classic film Elevator to the Gallows played softly beforehand, while the finale featured a surprise live performance by Charlotte Gainsbourg. As the show concluded, Vaccarello emerged onto the runway surrounded by his models, walked across the catwalk, and handed an object to his son—a touching gesture that many observers in the audience promptly, though incorrectly, interpreted as handing over the keys to the fashion house. Whatever the specific detail signified, it marked his final, poignant bow for Saint Laurent.
Throughout his decade at the house, Vaccarello’s conduct both reflected and amplified some of the creative patterns first sketched by the house’s legendary founding designer. Where Yves Saint Laurent had famously designed the memorable costumes for Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, Vaccarello proactively conceived the launch of Saint Laurent Productions in 2023. Under his guidance, the studio’s cinematic output has already included major critical successes, such as the double Oscar-winning film Emilia Pérez and Paolo Sorrentino’s acclaimed Parthenope. And just as Yves Saint Laurent both supported and was sustained by a close-knit coterie of extraordinary women that included Deneuve, Loulou de La Falaise, and Betty Catroux, Vaccarello’s own 21st-century generation of quintessential Saint Laurent women has prominently featured figures like Anja Rubik and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Reflecting on the heavy expectations associated with the brand, Vaccarello told Vogue in 2018: “Everyone has a vision of what they think Saint Laurent should be, and that’s something I knew when I started. I knew that whatever I did, some people would love it and some would hate it. It was the same with Hedi, and Stefano [Pilati] before him. I’m fine with it. In fact, I kind of love it.”
That acute observation could equally apply to Tom Ford, who had previously designed Yves Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear collections between 2000 and 2004, following the Gucci Group’s historic acquisition of the house in 1999 for a reported $1 billion. By the time Vaccarello arrived in 2016, Yves Saint Laurent had already been operating under the steady operational control of CEO Francesca Bellettini since 2013—the exact same year that Gucci Group, later known as PPR, was officially rechristened as Kering.
Following Yves Saint Laurent’s peak financial performance in 2022, the brand endured a subsequent three-year period of declining revenues, dipping to €2.64 billion by 2025, alongside a temporary contraction in operating margins from 30.9 percent to 20 percent. Much of this financial shift, however, was widely attributable to both a wider, industry-wide contraction across the luxury market and to YSL’s own aggressive 2023 strategic repositioning away from wholesale distribution. Vaccarello’s runway collections, meanwhile, only continued to become ever more uncompromisingly distinct in their bold interpretation of Yves Saint Laurent’s revolutionary template.
Bellettini, who is now the president and CEO of Gucci, was succeeded at Yves Saint Laurent by Cédric Charbit in early 2025. Charbit, much like Bellettini, stands as a prominent executive within Kering’s C-suite, having successfully surfed that same massive wave of luxury growth alongside creative director Demna during his tenure as CEO of Balenciaga starting in 2016. Prior to that role, Charbit served as executive vice president in charge of product, retail merchandising, and communication at Yves Saint Laurent, where his tenure conveniently overlapped with Vaccarello for the crucial first few months following the designer’s arrival at the label.
Speaking to the Financial Times this past May regarding the luxury sector’s stuttered boom, Charbit observed: “The industry’s growth has been extraordinary but not sustainable.” Despite this reality check, under Group CEO Luca de Meo, parent company Kering is continuing to apply intense internal pressure to reassert an upward trajectory in financial performance and brand value. Back in April, de Meo publicly stated that by the year 2030, YSL is aggressively targeting a more than doubling of its menswear sales, a tripling of its fine jewelry sales, a doubling of its Very Important Client (VIC) sales, and a minimum of €500 million in sales across its entry-price categories. Meeting these ambitious long-term targets will now fall, in substantial part, to whoever Kering ultimately appoints as Vaccarello’s successor.
Vaccarello, meanwhile, has already dropped subtle hints that his future creative moves might eventually take him far beyond the traditional boundaries of fashion. Speaking with interviewer Pamela Golbin for the entertainment publication The Wrap in 2024, he was asked what professional chapter could possibly follow his high-profile run at Yves Saint Laurent. He replied candidly: “It’s complicated because just being here is already a dream. Saint Laurent, for me, is the most beautiful house, the Holy Grail of houses. What can top that? The only thing you can do is to start something completely different… We need to aspire to new dreams that I don’t necessarily have yet.”
Now 46 years old, Vaccarello certainly has plenty of time ahead of him to formulate those new dreams—and to deeply savor his remarkable achievements during a decade-long service as the devoted custodian of Parisian fashion’s ultimate “Holy Grail.”
