Like his predecessor Hedi Slimane, Saint Laurent Creative Director Anthony Vaccarello has bolstered the house’s cachet by embodying the spirit of its totemic founder without trying to be him—by honoring influences, while embracing the contemporary. One such influence—a true ballast, really—for Vaccarello is cinema.
He has cited the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Luchino Visconti among his choice favorites, and often begins designs by imagining the film character who might wear them. It only makes sense that a key facet of his tenure has been the establishment of the house’s dedicated film production arm, Saint Laurent Productions—the first of its kind in couture.
In 1967, Yves Saint Laurent himself lent his prowess to Spanish Surrealist director Luis Buñuel, designing Catherine Deneuve’s wares for Belle de Jour, one of the most successful films of the auteur's career. Deneuve’s rotation of Saint Laurent looks remain as vibrant on screen as they were the day of the film’s debut.
Some fifty-odd years later, Vaccarello took charge of costuming Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal in Pedro Almodóvar’s irreverent 2023 short film Strange Way of Life. The film's premiere at Cannes piqued interest in the house’s involvement. Returning to Cannes in 2024 with a lineup of three feature-length films, it's evident that Saint Laurent Productions’s dedication to cinema is not a lark.
The current dalliance began with smaller promotional fare, including a 21-minute spot by Jim Jarmusch, a curation by Wong Kar-wai, and a posthumous premiere of an avant-garde work by Saint Laurent contemporary Jean-Luc Godard. This year, Saint Laurent Productions ups the ante.
Emilia Perez from Jacques Audiard, whose 2015 film Dheepan took home the Palme d'Or in 2015, heralds Selena Gomez’s return to the big screen alongside Zoe Saldana. Initially appearing as a crime thriller, the plot takes an unexpected turn when Saldana’s character Rita, a lawyer, is recruited by Manitas, the leader of a cartel, to aid him in exiting his criminal operations and pursuing a different ambition: Undergoing a sex reassignment surgery that serves both a gender-affirming and law-evading purpose.
Body horror purveyor David Cronenberg returns with The Shrouds, starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and Guy Pearce. The film delves into a core Cronenbergian touchstone: The ability to communicate with the deceased, this time via a dangerous technology.
Then there’s Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope. The heir-apparent to Federico Fellini here crafts a film that follows a young woman, born in the sea of Naples in 1950, as she yearns for happiness during the languid summers of her youth—a love letter to hometowns and their unforgettable characters. Prior to Cannes, the film had already been acquired by A24.
The connective tissue among the diverse slate is the excellence of its auteurs. Throwing the weight of the brand behind them, Vaccarello affirms their singularity of vision, proclivity for subversion, and commitment to an ephemeral beauty—all qualities of Saint Laurent itself.
