Film & TV

Saint Laurent Wins At Cannes, But Will Other Fashion Houses Keep Making Movies?

Saint Laurent Productions won two awards at Cannes for “Emilia Pérez” after becoming the first fashion house to start its own production company.

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Poster of ‘Emilia Perez'. Photo courtesy of Saint Laurent.

After premiering three films at the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival, Saint Laurent Productions took home two prizes for the film “Emilia Pérez,” a musical comedy thriller starring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Edgar Ramirez and Adriana Paz. 

The film won the Jury Prize, presented to director Jacques Audiard by the jury of the festival, and the Best Performance By An Actress Prize, presented to all of the leading actresses in the film. 

Adriana Paz, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón and Selena Gomez were each awarded the best actress prize as an ensemble, making this the first time the jury has given a collective acting prize in this particular category. Gascón accepted the award on her own, making history as the first trans woman to win the best actress prize at Cannes, and she dedicated the award to trans people everywhere. 

Greta Gerwig, the president of the jury at this year’s festival, explained while announcing the best actress award that the jury wanted to honor women as a collective this year. “Each of them is a standout, but together transcendent,” she said.

The film follows the story of Rita, a lawyer who is “overqualified and undervalued,” and “more interested in getting criminals off the hook than bringing them to justice,” according to the film’s synopsis

Saint Laurent dressed the actors of “Emilia Pérez” on the red carpet for the premiere, as well as providing costuming in the movie. The fashion house’s production company might be new to the film industry, but it has made a strong first impression with both a winning film and strong red carpet moments. 

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Selena Gomez in Saint Laurent at Cannes Film Festival, courtesy of Getty Images.

Saint Laurent’s foray into film is new for the fashion industry, but it could be the start of a trend among other houses. According to Saint Laurent’s website, Saint Laurent Productions “is a registered subsidiary of the house, [and] marks the first fashion house to count the full-fledged production of films among its activities.” 

Saint Laurent’s creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, has been championing the house’s vision for the production company. The website notes that this new division of the brand “is in line with Vaccarello’s assured steering of the brand into the future, while echoing the cinematic breadth and nuances of his collections.” 

The direct relationship between fashion houses and film has perhaps never been clearer than here, with Saint Laurent being the first house to start its own production company, fully affiliated with the brand as a subsidiary. It makes sense, as fashion and costuming are such important parts of film and film has often been a medium used to display fashion’s many stories and dimensions. From famous films about the fashion industry to fashion shows being filmed and shown online every season, both of these creative mediums have been in varying degrees of collaboration for years

Though Saint Laurent is breaking new ground with their production company, other houses have been closely involved with film as a medium in different ways. Gucci has often used film as a medium for advertising various campaigns, like their “Absolute Beginners” series in collaboration with Dazed. Each selected artist directed their own short film with the goal of celebrating “the potency of pop culture and naivety, the beauty in amateurism and exposes the power and vulnerability of the creative impulse,” according to Gucci’s website. There is a clear mission behind the series, and film is used as the creative outlet to accomplish that mission, but the brand’s identity remains firmly at the forefront. 

Campaigns like Gucci’s are common in the fashion industry, but what Saint Laurent has chosen to do with Saint Laurent Productions is something bigger and more independent. “Emilia Pérez” is not being used to advertise the Saint Laurent brand; it’s a well-made, carefully crafted film with no intentions of being anything otherwise. In this way, it makes a bold statement about the future of Saint Laurent, and perhaps a larger statement about the future of major fashion houses as a whole. 

Anthony Vaccarello is using film as a new project, separate from fashion, though combined in one shared creative vision for the brand. Ultimately, the job of a creative director is to distill a brand to one cohesive vision and then work to expand and grow that vision over time. For Saint Laurent, the fashion and film mediums are treated as separate entities, collaborating only to create a sense of aesthetic consistency, not to market products. 

After initially announcing Saint Laurent Productions last year, Vaccarello told Variety that it will give him, “the opportunity to expand the vision [he has] for Saint Laurent through a medium that has more permanence than clothes… it’s a natural extension to another field of creativity that perhaps is more general and popular.”

Vaccarello’s vision for growth at Saint Laurent seems to be embracing more than just fashion, attaching the Saint Laurent name to other art forms in order to show that fashion can weave a web between every art form. Fashion naturally exists within film, sculpture, paintings, dance, theater and even literature. 

It’s possible that other major fashion houses will follow Saint Laurent’s lead, especially after the success that Saint Laurent Productions saw at Cannes. Though some film producers were skeptical of seeing a fashion house enter the production space, there can be no doubt that the end result has been positive and is ultimately gaining more publicity for the brand. 

Especially since other brands from Gucci to Rachel Antonoff have already been using film as a medium for creative advertising, it wouldn’t be surprising if other large fashion houses follow Saint Laurent’s lead in establishing production companies and picking up larger scale projects. 

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