After a decade, Vaccarello leaves Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello is leaving Saint Laurent. Kering confirmed the departure on a Friday morning in October, ten years after he took the house over from Hedi Slimane. His spring show in Paris, the gilded one, turns out to have been the goodbye.

The exit

The statement came on 9 October. Saint Laurent said Vaccarello would step down after a decade as creative director, and that a new creative leadership team would be named soon. No name came with the announcement. A house that spent ten years built around one eye now runs without a signature at the top.

Kering's chief executive, Luca de Meo, thanked Vaccarello for the decade and credited his vision with deepening the brand's influence. The wording was warm and the decision was final. De Meo arrived at Kering in 2025 to steady a group in decline, and the Saint Laurent seat is among the larger pieces he now has to fill. The move had been expected for months, which softened the surprise without lightening the weight of it.

The look

Vaccarello took the house in 2016, after Hedi Slimane had spent four years rebranding it and dividing its audience. He did not reverse that work. He absorbed it, trimmed the noise, and settled Saint Laurent on a single idea: a sharp, sensual Parisian woman who dresses for herself.

Le smoking stayed at the centre of it. He cut the tuxedo close to the body, let the shoulder and the lapel carry the line, and set it against bare backs, hard shine and black on black. The clothes were adult, and the woman in them was never asked to apologise. Season after season he made the same argument and rarely lost it.

The shows matched the clothes. He staged them outdoors after dark, the Eiffel Tower lit behind the runway and the pools catching the light. The front row filled with actors and musicians, and the pictures travelled further than any single dress. Paris was the set, and Saint Laurent paid for the lighting.

The accessories did the volume. Bags, shoes and small leather goods carried the revenue while the runway carried the image, and Vaccarello kept the two in step. The clothes sold the idea, and the handbags paid for it.

The numbers

The business grew under him. Revenue nearly tripled across his tenure and climbed above three billion euros at its height, which held Saint Laurent as the second-largest house at Kering behind Gucci. For much of the decade it was the group's most dependable earner, the brand that covered for the ones that wobbled.

Then the market turned. Growth slowed in 2023 as the aspirational shopper stopped spending, and sales slipped to 2.6 billion euros in 2025. Saint Laurent answered by moving upmarket, leaning on leather goods and the wealthier client who keeps buying when others pause. The house returned to growth in the first half of 2026.

The wider group had a harder year. Kering reported a third straight year of falling sales in 2025 and a net loss, with Gucci the heaviest drag. Against that, Saint Laurent's recovery stood out as one of the few clean lines in the accounts, which is part of why a change at its top reads as planned rather than forced.

The vacancy

The timing reads as a Kering decision as much as a Vaccarello one. De Meo is rebuilding the group from the top, and a creative change at its second house fits the plan. Gucci has already turned over its studio under the same management. Now the seat Vaccarello held for ten years is open, and whoever takes it inherits a defined house rather than a blank one.

Saint Laurent has said only that an announcement is coming. Until it does, the house keeps selling the codes he set: the tuxedo, the black, the shine. His spring/summer 2027 show, staged in gold in Paris, now stands as the last collection he will sign. A successor can extend that grammar or push against it. Starting from nothing is the one option they do not have.

The read

The exit closes one of the longest single-designer runs in the group. Ten years at a major house is rare now, when studios change hands every few seasons and a tenure is counted in collections rather than decades. Vaccarello outlasted that churn by keeping the house legible, and by giving Kering a brand it could sell in any room.

He gave the group ten years of clarity at a house that rewards it. He leaves it smaller than its 2022 peak and steadier than the market around it, with a signature that still sells on sight. The gilded show in Paris was a fitting last word, loud and precise.

The lights are down on the decade. The codes stay lit, and the next hand will work by them.