Anthony Vaccarello

Anthony Vaccarello took over Saint Laurent in April 2016 and has spent the ensuing decade working through the house’s wardrobe: the narrow tuxedo, the strong shoulder, the sheer evening dress. He brought the Cassandre YSL monogram back into view after Hedi Slimane’s rebrand, yet his Saint Laurent is recognisably his own—lean, controlled and often cut to reveal as much as it conceals. As of September 2026, he remains creative director; the CFDA has named him its International Designer of the Year. (Kering; Business of Fashion)

The length of his tenure has given those ideas room to develop. A tuxedo can return season after season with a different shoulder or a new balance between jacket and trouser. Vaccarello has treated Saint Laurent’s archive as a working wardrobe, keeping its familiar forms in circulation while altering their proportions. (Dazed)

Brussels, La Cambre and a Hyères prize

Vaccarello was born in Brussels in 1982 to Italian parents and grew up there before enrolling at La Cambre, the Brussels art school, where he initially studied sculpture. He switched to the fashion course and graduated with honours in 2006, presenting his degree collection — an all-leather line — at the Hyères Festival, the French competition that has launched a string of designer careers. It won him the Grand Prix du Jury Première Vision, with Ann Demeulemeester on that year's jury. The collection caught Karl Lagerfeld's attention, and Lagerfeld hired him directly into Fendi's fur and leather studio in Rome, where Vaccarello spent two years cutting pelts and shearling under him. (FashionUnited; ANDAM)

A label of his own, then Versus

Vaccarello left Fendi for Paris and launched his own label, showing a five-piece womenswear collection at the Maria Luisa boutique in January 2009: leather and organza miniskirts built around the same body-conscious cutting he had practised at Fendi. The label moved onto the official Paris Fashion Week calendar in 2011, the year it also won him the ANDAM Fashion Award and its €200,000 endowment, from a jury that included Pierre Bergé — Yves Saint Laurent's business and life partner, and by then the guardian of his legacy. Vaccarello put the label on hold in April 2016 when he took the Saint Laurent job, and it has not shown again since. (ANDAM; Business of Fashion)

Alongside his own label, Vaccarello began consulting for Versus, the Gianni Versace-founded diffusion line then owned outright by Versace, around 2013. He was named the label's creative director in January 2015 and spent just over a year in sole charge of it before Versace and Saint Laurent announced, on the same day in April 2016, that he was leaving Versus for Saint Laurent. (WWD; Dazed)

The YSL monogram and a sharper tuxedo

Kering announced Vaccarello's appointment as Saint Laurent's creative director on 4 April 2016, praising the "modernity and purity" of his aesthetic and its balance of "provocative femininity" with "acute masculinity." He was 34, and had never worked at a house of Saint Laurent's scale or history. His predecessor, Hedi Slimane, had renamed the label Saint Laurent Paris in 2012, retired the Cassandre "YSL" monogram that the graphic artist A. M. Cassandre had designed for Yves Saint Laurent in 1961, and rebuilt the runway around a leaner, more youthful silhouette that nearly tripled the house's revenue. (Kering; FashionNetwork)

For his Spring/Summer 2017 debut, shown in September 2016, Vaccarello placed enormous illuminated YSL letters outside the venue. The monogram appeared again as the heel of a stiletto. Inside, he looked chiefly to Saint Laurent’s 1980s work: sharp tailoring, bare skin and gold. He said he wanted the founder’s attitude rather than copies of his garments, a distinction that has held through his later collections. (Refinery29; W Magazine)

The clearest thread through that archive work is Le Smoking, the tuxedo suit Yves Saint Laurent designed for women in 1966, dismantling the idea that formal tailoring belonged to men alone. Vaccarello has put a version of it in almost every collection he has shown since his 2016 debut, sharpening the shoulder and narrowing the cut season by season rather than restaging the original. His Autumn/Winter 2026 show, presented as the suit turned sixty, opened with eight reinterpretations of it in a row. (Dazed)

Landmark shows: the Eiffel Tower and Marrakech

Vaccarello has staged several of his women's shows on the Trocadéro esplanade with the Eiffel Tower behind the runway, using the most recognisable Paris landmark to reassert Saint Laurent as the most Parisian of French houses. The September 2019 show for Spring/Summer 2020, one of several held there, sent out long, fluid dresses trimmed in gold 1970s-inflected embroidery beneath the tower at dusk, with Naomi Campbell closing. (Malay Mail)

For men's Spring/Summer 2023, Vaccarello moved the show to Morocco, staging it in the Agafay Desert outside Marrakech, a city Yves Saint Laurent first visited in 1966 and returned to for the rest of his life as a retreat from Paris. Working with the stage designer Es Devlin, Vaccarello built a ring-shaped illuminated set in the desert, taking its mood from Paul Bowles's 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky. It was the most direct staging yet of the idea that Vaccarello's Saint Laurent runs on the founder's own geography as much as his silhouettes. (A Magazine Curated By)

Beyond the runway: Rive Droite and Saint Laurent Productions

Vaccarello has also extended Saint Laurent's creative direction past clothing. Saint Laurent Rive Droite, launched in 2019, took its name from the Left Bank boutique where Yves Saint Laurent first sold ready-to-wear in 1966 and turned it into a chain of concept stores mixing clothing with books, records, art and homeware — a more maximalist proposition than the house's own runway minimalism. In 2023 he set up Saint Laurent Productions, a fully-fledged film-production subsidiary rather than the usual costuming or sponsorship arrangement other fashion houses run — Saint Laurent has described itself as the first fashion house to do so. Its early titles included Pedro Almodóvar's Strange Way of Life and a posthumous Jean-Luc Godard short, both premiered at Cannes in 2023, followed by David Cronenberg's The Shrouds, Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope, and Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez, which won prizes at Cannes and multiple Oscar nominations. Saint Laurent Productions remains active as of 2026. (Deadline; WWD; FashionUnited)

A decade of stability

Saint Laurent's revenue rose from roughly €1.22 billion in 2016, Vaccarello's first year, to over €3.3 billion in 2022, overtaking Gucci as Kering's second-largest house behind the group's flagship at points across that stretch, and the label was twice named the industry's most desirable brand by the Lyst Index. Vaccarello has credited meeting Betty Catroux, Yves Saint Laurent's closest muse and lifelong friend, with sharpening his sense of the house's real codes rather than its more obvious signifiers. He reissued the Mombasa bag, one of Tom Ford-era Yves Saint Laurent's signature pieces, as part of that broader excavation of the archive under his own eye rather than only the founder's. (FashionUnited; nss magazine)

The CFDA announced its International Designer of the Year award for Vaccarello in September 2026, ten years after his appointment. The recognition came after a sustained run of collections that made Saint Laurent’s tuxedo, monogram and eveningwear newly visible without freezing them as archive pieces. (Wonderland; Business of Fashion)

Labels, dating and how to read the work

The ready-to-wear label is the first clue when placing a Saint Laurent piece. Older garments may carry the full Yves Saint Laurent name. Slimane introduced the Saint Laurent Paris wordmark in 2012; Vaccarello kept the Saint Laurent name while bringing the Cassandre YSL monogram back into prominent use on the runway and accessories. The monogram alone cannot date a bag or garment to a Vaccarello collection, because it remained in use on some accessories during Slimane's tenure. Check the interior season code and compare the piece with collection images. (FashionNetwork; Refinery29)

References

• Kering. "Yves Saint Laurent Appoints Anthony Vaccarello as Creative Director." Business Wire, 4 April 2016.
• FashionUnited. "5 things you should know about Anthony Vaccarello." 5 April 2016.
• ANDAM. "Anthony Vaccarello." Laureates.
• Business of Fashion. "Anthony Vaccarello Puts Brand on Hold." 2016.
• WWD. "Anthony Vaccarello Named Versus Creative Head." January 2015.
• Dazed. "Anthony Vaccarello leaves Versus Versace." 4 April 2016.
• FashionNetwork. "Yves Saint Laurent to be renamed Saint Laurent Paris." 2012.
• Refinery29. "Anthony Vaccarello Puts The Yves Back In Yves Saint Laurent." September 2016.
• W Magazine. "Anthony Vaccarello Takes a Defiant First Bow at Saint Laurent, Brings Back the Yves." September 2016.
• Dazed. "Saint Laurent AW26 paid tribute to the iconic Le Smoking jacket." 2026.
• Malay Mail. "Saint Laurent brings elegance to dazzling show in front of Eiffel Tower." 25 September 2019.
• A Magazine Curated By. "Saint Laurent in Morocco: Anthony Vaccarello's ode to The Sheltering Sky." 2022.
• Deadline. "Saint Laurent Launches Film Production Banner." April 2023.
• WWD. "Fashion House Saint Laurent Has Created a Film Production Subsidiary." 2023.
• FashionUnited. "Anthony Vaccarello's decade at Saint Laurent: A retrospective." 18 August 2026.
• nss magazine. "How Anthony Vaccarello Redefined Saint Laurent in 10 Years." 2026.
• Wonderland. "Anthony Vaccarello is having a very good year." 11 September 2026.
• Business of Fashion. "The CFDA Names Anthony Vaccarello International Designer of the Year, Unveils 2026 Award Nominees." 11 September 2026.