Anthony Vaccarello Leaves Saint Laurent: What His Exit Reveals About Kering and Who Might Get the Keys

Last week we wrote, with a straight face, that no change in creative leadership at Saint Laurent had been announced. We called the farewell theory a case of collective over-reading and admitted we were part of it. On Friday, October 9, Kering made it official: Anthony Vaccarello is leaving Saint Laurent after ten years as creative director. So, for the record, the tea-leaf readers of Instagram were right. We are taking the loss gracefully and with a fresh cup.

The more interesting question now is not whether he goes but what his exit tells you about the luxury business in 2026. Saint Laurent was the last of Kering’s big houses still run by the designer it had before the group’s great reshuffle. As of Friday, every one of Kering’s four biggest fashion houses is either under new creative leadership or about to be.

What is actually confirmed

The facts are short. Kering said Vaccarello is stepping down and that his successor will be named soon. No name has been announced and no effective date for the handover has been reported. Kering chief executive Luca de Meo thanked him for his contribution over the past ten years, while Saint Laurent chief executive Cédric Charbit credited him with taking the house on a “remarkable trajectory”. Vaccarello himself has not announced any new role.

His last collection, Spring/Summer 2027, was shown on September 29 in front of the Eiffel Tower: 49 looks in gold followed by ten in black. At the time it read like a love letter to Yves Saint Laurent. Read again with Friday’s news in hand, it looks like a man putting the archive back on the shelf in perfect order before handing over the keys.

Ten years in three objects

When Vaccarello arrived in April 2016 he was following Hedi Slimane, who had spent four years making the house skinny and rock-and-roll. Slimane had also dropped the “Yves” from the ready-to-wear label, which caused a minor nervous breakdown among purists. Vaccarello, Belgian and then in his mid-thirties, did not undo any of that. He simply turned the volume in a different direction: sharper shoulders, more skin, more night.

If you want his decade in three objects, try these. First, the shoulder: a strong, 1980s-inspired line pulled from the house’s own archive and often worn with very little underneath. Second, the bag. PurseBlog points out that he rarely showed handbags on the runway, yet commercial hits such as the Le 5 à 7 and the Icare tote did much of the heavy lifting at the till. Third, the film camera. In 2023 he launched Saint Laurent Productions, whose credits include the Cannes prize winner Emilia Pérez. A fashion house producing auteur cinema sounded like a vanity project. It turned out to be one of the smartest brand moves of the decade, because nothing says “cultural authority” like a red carpet you financed yourself.

The commercial record is equally clear. Reuters reports that Saint Laurent’s annual sales passed €3 billion at their peak, built in large part on strong demand from Chinese shoppers. PurseBlog describes revenue as nearly tripling during his tenure. Then came the luxury slowdown: according to Kering, Saint Laurent’s revenue fell 9 percent in 2024 and 6 percent in 2025 before largely stabilising this year.

Kering’s game of musical chairs is complete

To understand the timing, zoom out. Gucci, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta all changed creative directors last year as part of de Meo’s attempt to overhaul a group that has been struggling through a weak luxury market. Reuters notes that Kering shares are down 31 percent this year. The group reports third-quarter sales on October 22. In that context, Saint Laurent was the stable one, the house you did not need to fix. That is exactly why its turn came last.

A note from Barclays, reported by Haute Living, says Kering told analysts the decision reflects the house’s longer-term prospects and is unrelated to recent financial performance. You may file that under corporate diplomacy or under honest strategy. Probably both. What Barclays analysts do say plainly is what the next designer should focus on: women’s daywear, menswear, high-end leather goods and markets such as China and Asia where the brand is less established. In other words, the new person is expected to sell more coats for Tuesday, not just more dresses for Saturday night.

Who gets the keys?

This is where we put on our clearly labelled speculation hat. Industry reports from Reuters and WWD name Chemena Kamali, creative director of Chloé since 2023, as the frontrunner. She is no stranger: she spent 2016 to 2023 at Saint Laurent as women’s ready-to-wear design director, working under Vaccarello. Neither Saint Laurent nor Chloé has confirmed anything. If it happened, W magazine notes, she would be the first woman to lead the house creatively. That would be a fitting twist for a label whose founder gave women the tuxedo in 1966 with Le Smoking.

Watching fashion appointments right now feels a bit like watching Succession, except the siblings wear better tailoring and nobody gets to shout. Every move at one house leaves an empty chair somewhere else. If Kamali went to Paris’s Left Bank, Chloé would need a new designer of its own. The carousel never really stops. It only changes music.

What this means for you

If you own a Saint Laurent piece from the last decade, nothing changes overnight, except possibly its story. Designers’ final collections tend to become collector items. The gold-and-black finale of Spring/Summer 2027 now has a clear narrative attached to it. That is an observation about how the archive market usually behaves, not a price forecast, so please do not remortgage anything.

For the rest of us, the more useful lesson is about how luxury works in 2026. Houses are no longer betting on one genius to define a decade. They are looking for designers who can widen the business: more everyday wardrobe, more menswear, more categories. That is less romantic than the old myth of the visionary in an ivory tower. It may, however, be good news for anyone who wants Saint Laurent to make a perfect jacket you can actually wear to work.

Vaccarello leaves with honours still to come. He is set to receive the International Designer of the Year award at the CFDA Fashion Awards on November 2 and is nominated at The Fashion Awards in London on November 30. So the farewell tour is not quite over. And this time, when someone writes a poetic sentence in a show note, we promise to read it twice.