Is it true that Anthony Vaccarello is about to leave Saint Laurent? So say Glitz and BoringNotCom, which are not official sources but have often been right in the past

Today, around nine in the morning, BoringNotCom decided to throw the entire fashion industry into a state of agitation. Using the hashtag #allegedly, it posted a flurry of Instagram messages claiming that Anthony Vaccarello is on the verge of leaving Saint Laurent and that Chemena Kamali, currently creative director of Chloé, would be stepping in to replace him. Naturally, all the insiders immediately went to check whether more official outlets had confirmed the news, but neither WWD nor BoF has said a word, and of course neither have the Saint Laurent and Chloé pages themselves.

A week ago, the online magazine Glitz published an article arguing that, given Luca De Meo's arrival at the helm of Kering, there would be major shake-ups in the creative direction of the group's leading brands. Shortly before that, the Spanish magazine Invogua had announced that Anthony Vaccarello's ten-year contract as the brand's creative director would not be renewed — a piece of news immediately denied by Kering and removed from the magazine's website, but which apparently served to fuel the rumours that BoringNotCom highlighted on Instagram this morning.

What remains true, however, is that the self-proclaimed «queen of media» BoringNotCom has a remarkably impressive track record of predictions that have come true. She called Olivier Rousteing's departure from Balmain and his move to Rabanne a month in advance, and predicted both Adrian Appiolaza's exit from Moschino and Jonathan Anderson's departure from Loewe months ahead of time. Could she have got it right again this time?

The Saint Laurent mystery

It is well known that Kering has been underperforming. The group has not yet fully recovered from the Gucci shock and has embarked on a laborious restructuring of its operations — both to reduce its dependence on the Italian brand and to contain costs across its smaller brands, as well as to invest in new brands, mostly Chinese ones, in an attempt to tap into the region's consumer trends. Within the Kering ecosystem, Saint Laurent is the second-largest brand after Gucci and the most stable after Bottega Veneta.

Looking at Saint Laurent's annual results for 2025, we see that the brand generated €2.64 billion in revenue. A performance that was actually down on previous years (somewhere between 6% and 8%), though it did recover towards the end of the year. For 2026, we have no data on the individual brand's full-year performance, but in the mid-year statement, the group said that Saint Laurent had enjoyed «renewed momentum, returning to growth this half with an acceleration versus the prior quarter across all regions except Asia-Pacific. The house delivered a solid performance in North America and Western Europe, benefiting from strong client demand […]» and also «robust growth among VIC and Core clients».

The point here is that, during Kering's delicate return-to-growth phase, Saint Laurent represents something of an anchor for the group: its shows are well received, it launched the ruched loafer trend, and this summer it broke the internet with a campaign starring Connor Storrie, the brand's new face. Any change of horse mid-race right now would seem rather risky for a group that is finding its footing again in these months. It is true that Chemena Kamali served as Design Director at Saint Laurent from 2016 to 2023, so any potential move on her part would not be a seismic shift — but what could be the rationale behind such a switch?

Kamali and Chloé's momentum

Chemena Kamali's arrival at Chloé was generally very well received by the public. Regardless of the diverging critical opinions, the brand is growing (by how much we don't know), though its business remains considerably smaller than Saint Laurent's. Richemont's "Other" category — separate from jewellery and encompassing brands such as Alaïa, Peter Millar and Montblanc — posted combined annual revenue last year of €2.73 billion, which is only marginally more than Saint Laurent's annual revenue alone within Kering.

Now, this fashion segment in particular — whose results are not broken down by individual brand — has recently posted excellent growth: we have no precise figures for Chloé alone, but it is considered one of the most consistently growing segments of all. The segment grew by 9% in the April-to-June period of this year alone. In other words, not only is Kamali doing good work based on the available metrics, but we can also assume (and this is our hypothesis) that working at Chloé, within a group that is thriving thanks to an entirely separate business, involves far less pressure and top-down interference than Vaccarello faces inside Kering, where the ranks are being furiously closed.

Moreover, we can assume that at Chloé, Kamali not only enjoys greater creative freedom, but also holds a position of considerable prominence — one she earned after years spent as Design Director. She has only been at Chloé for a short time, having started in late 2023, and has shown just five collections: ambition could certainly make her covet the creative directorship of Saint Laurent, but given that Chloé is performing well, would it make more sense to try to build something there, or to subject herself to the crushing expectations of Kering's management and creatively lead a brand so much larger and more complex? At first glance, the odds of success are greater in the former scenario — even if, in the latter, success would be a triumph. All that remains is to wait and see whether the «queen of media» was right once again.