At the beginning of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s new music video, we trace the journey of a vintage Chevrolet Impala convertible, bathed in the honey-colored light of a California sunset. Gainsbourg sits at the wheel of the car, languidly turning the wheel in a green velvet Saint Laurent jacket and a pair of shades before climbing up onto the seats to let the breeze fly through her hair.
Accompanying it all? Moody, waltzing synths by the legendary French producer Sebastian that nod to the dreamlike (and ever-so-slightly sinister) scores created by Angelo Badalamenti for the films of David Lynch. “I was feeling very inspired by Lynch after he died,” Gainsbourg tells me. “It was the mood I was in, and I made it as an homage.”
But there was another towering creative figure who had a hand in the music video’s production: Anthony Vaccarello. The fashion designer and longtime creative director of Saint Laurent decided to celebrate the song—which originated as the soundtrack for the French fashion house’s fall 2025 menswear collection—by directing the video himself, marking his first time stepping into the director’s seat. (It’s not, however, the first time he’s involved himself in the world of filmmaking: Through Saint Laurent Productions, he’s helped bring films by auteurs like Jacques Audiard, David Cronenberg, and Jim Jarmusch to the silver screen.)
“The idea to direct the music video emerged quite organically,” says Vaccarello. “I wanted to explore new creative formats with an artist who shares my vision. So the conversation started with Charlotte, and we both felt it was the perfect opportunity to merge my aesthetic with the rhythm and emotion of the music.”
It isn’t hard to see why Vaccarello and Gainsbourg might be drawn to one another, given their boundless creative interests and shared fascination with the darker side of human nature. “I met Charlotte in 2013, as she wanted to wear something from my Anthony Vaccarello collections for the César Awards,” Vaccarello remembers. “At first, it sounded crazy, so I didn’t respond immediately. Then the request came through someone else, and that’s when I realized it was serious. I remember being really impressed. For a young designer like me, getting the chance to dress her was just amazing.” For Gainsbourg, that fateful meeting is equally memorable: “He was extremely shy, and I was too, but we connected! He put me in a much sexier look than what I was used to at the time, and I was happy and willing to go there.”
Over the years since, their friendship has continued to evolve, with Gainsbourg making regular appearances on the Saint Laurent front row and in Vaccarello’s campaigns for the house. Yet that mutual shyness deriving from their admiration for each other has never fully abated. “I think we are still sort of a little mystery to one another, which is good,” Gainsbourg says. “I still find it quite mysterious the way he works. I’ve known him for quite a while now, and I know his family, but he’s very shy, and I am too. So there’s something very respectful between us, where we don’t want to know too much about the other. I know we like to keep a bit of magic there.”
Not coincidentally, that feeling of magic dawned on Gainsbourg when she heard the Saint Laurent runway show track for the first time. When Sebastian—with whom Gainsbourg worked on her last album, 2017’s critically acclaimed Rest—invited her to sing over it, she immediately said yes. “I lived with it a little while before coming up with an idea,” she says, the deliberately cryptic nature of her lyrics—“Ever so nasty, my eyes go misty / Oh you’re gonna miss me, under my blurry moon,” she croons, gently—serving to capture the uneasy, melancholic tone of Lynch’s masterpieces.
“I didn’t expect to shoot a music video when I was writing,” Gainsbourg adds. “It was just a few words—it seemed more like a small painting than a real story.” Yet when Vaccarello and Gainsbourg both found themselves in Los Angeles, they (fairly spontaneously) decided to start shooting—and Vaccarello offered to take the plunge and direct the video, hoping to conjure up something “intimate and cinematic, inspired by Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, an offbeat tribute to Hollywood’s daydreams and illusions,” in his words. For Gainsbourg’s part, “I was happily trusting his inspiration,” she says. “The song has a moody vibe that goes well with that Los Angeles feeling of isolation and weird reverie, driving on those winding roads…. With Anthony, I love just trusting his vision. He knows what will look good, but I don’t think that’s his main goal. It goes beyond that. He has aspirations that carry him. For instance, directing a music video—I don’t think he’ll stop there.”
Indeed, this might be Vaccarello’s first time directing, but presumably it won’t be his last? He points to the inspiration he’s found working on Saint Laurent Productions. “Working with directors like Jim Jarmusch and Jacques Audiard was very inspiring,” he says. “Seeing how they bring stories to life with such a unique vision made me want to try filmmaking too. For me, fashion and film aren’t so different—it’s all about storytelling, just in different ways.”
And while Gainsbourg has been busy working on films like Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme and the TV drama Étoile recently, does this augur a return to music for her, seven years since her last record? “I’ve been working on an ongoing project that’s taken me too long, but it happens,” she says, smiling. “So hopefully, it’ll be finished quite soon—in a few months, hopefully. But I’ve been saying this for the past four years. This song isn’t the beginning of what I’m doing on my own, but it’s a way of pushing me into that field of music that I’m longing to get back into. Hopefully, it will give me some momentum.” There’s nothing like the encouragement of a friend to get you on your way, after all.
