12/07/2023 - With works by Pedro Almodóvar, Paolo Sorrentino and David Cronenberg on its upcoming slate, the French luxury fashion house leads a recent incursion from the sector into the film world

Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal in Pedro Almodóvar's Strange Way of Life

As the parade of co-production logos begins, when watching a typical festival film, get ready for an auspicious “Saint Laurent Productions” vanity plate (which will surely be iconically designed). Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent’s house creative director, is heading up the Kering-owned brand’s new film-production subsidiary, which is touting itself as the first of its kind for a fashion label. At this May’s Cannes Film Festival, the production company’s first two shorts, Pedro Almódovar’s Strange Way of Life (see the news) and Jean-Luc Godard’s posthumous Trailer of a Movie that Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars”, enjoyed their premieres; they’ll be followed up by David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds and Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope, two highly anticipated features that will launch next year. Whilst Saint Laurent has enjoyed a long relationship with cinema, with its founder, Yves Saint Laurent, designing fashions for Luis Buñuel and François Truffaut’s 1960s films, this will be its first official leap into film production. Vaccarello himself will head up costume design, as each film on the slate requires.

Having previously funded Gaspar Noé’s eyeball-searing medium-length Lux Æterna and a less-heralded pandemic-era short by Jim Jarmusch called French Water, Saint Laurent is due to support in-the-works features by the two directors. Overall, the slate is slanted towards seasoned auteurs, with Wong Kar-Wai and Abel Ferrara also preparing upcoming collaborations. Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz’s La passion selon Beatrice, backed by the new company, has been submitted to Venice; the project is a tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini, featuring Ferrera himself and Béatrice Dalle.

Speaking to the fashion-industry “bible” Women’s Wear Daily, Vaccarello passionately talked up his new venture: “For me, a film is something you can still see in ten, 20 or 30 years if it’s a good one. Communication-wise, doing a film has more impact on people than a collection. I’m very excited to extend that creativity into something broader and more popular… It’s a new approach to maybe get new Saint Laurent customers.” He also said his choice of directors had “shaped me and inspired me over the years,” and they share a “dark undercurrent” that “can be controversial, in a good way”.

With technology companies and now consumer brands (seen in the likely success of the upcoming Barbie film) shoring up film financing and contributing to a production boom for audiovisual content, it’s natural that fashion-world capital would follow suit. To highlight other examples, Andrew Lauren, scion of Ralph Lauren, continues steering his own production company, which has supported Claire Denis and Brady Corbet’s recent work, to name a few. In Venice’s Giornate degli Autori, Prada’s offshoot brand Miu Miu has premiered shorts by important contemporary female auteurs, including Kaouther Ben Hania and Carla Simón, in recent years, and is following suit this year with Mexican director Lila Avilés, whose Tótem [+see also:
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interview: Lila Avilés
film profile] was acclaimed at the last Berlinale. Olivier Assayas’s under-seen but perceptive series Irma Vep [+see also:
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interview: Olivier Assayas
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interview: Charles Gillibert
interview: Olivier Assayas
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interview: Artemio Benki
interview: Olivier Assayas
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