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On Saturday, Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello and CEO Francesca Bellettini, also deputy CEO of Kering, joined Kering head honcho François-Henri Pinault and his wife Salma Hayek to attend the screening of Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez in Cannes. They sat right behind Audiard and the cast, including Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez and Édgar Ramírez.
The positioning of the team of luxury heavyweights was symbolic: Saint Laurent is co-producer of the film.
This is the second year that the Kering-owned brand has been involved in the Cannes Film Festival through its production company, Saint Laurent Productions. Last year, it notably produced a 30-minute gay Western by Pedro Almovódar, Strange Way of Life. This time, Saint Laurent is back with three films: Emilia Perez, Parthenope by Paolo Sorrentino and The Shrouds by David Cronenberg. It represents a new chapter in the storied relationship between fashion and cinema, which is evolving beyond basic product placement and branded documentaries.
Emilia Perez tells the story of Rita (played by Saldana), a lawyer who agrees with a cartel leader to help him withdraw from his business and his life and make his dream come true: to become a woman. It earned a 15-minute standing ovation — the biggest of this year’s festival so far, according to Variety. It seems, therefore, to be a successful bet for Saint Laurent, which oversaw the movie’s creative supervision including the costumes, as well as dressing its stars for the red carpet and hosting the post-screening party.
Part of the challenge of this new relationship between fashion and entertainment is navigating the creative tension between the vision of a film director and a fashion house that has its own creative agenda. “You’re giving up control in the sense that in order to make a good story, you also have to let the story be an independent vehicle,” says Jenna Barnet, CEO of Sunshine, an LA and London-based creative agency specialising in building entertainment strategy for brands. (Sunshine was recently acquired by The Independents, a communications group that notes Karla Otto, Bureau Betak and Lefty among its portfolio.)
But if brands can let go of some of that control, it can provide a platform to connect with a broad base of potential consumers. “It’s soft power, rather than commerciality,” says Elsa Keslassy, executive editor of international at Variety.
Saint Laurent parent company Kering has been eyeing the opportunity in film for years, as the luxury battle in the cinema space heats up. It is a long-standing partner of Cannes and launched the Women in Motion programme in 2015 to highlight women’s contribution to cinema (this year it awarded NBC Universal chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley and emerging talent Amanda Nell Eu at a star-studded dinner on Sunday in Cannes). In September 2023, Artémis, the Pinault family’s investment company, agreed to acquire a majority stake in renowned Hollywood agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
In February 2024, LVMH struck back by announcing its own Hollywood venture, 22 Montaigne Entertainment in partnership with Superconnector Studios — described as “a single platform to accelerate its 75 maison marketing efforts into premium films, TV and audio formats”. The goal is to allow “more of our maisons to engage authentically with their audience through premium productions”, LVMH North America chairman and CEO Anish Melwani said in a statement.
Chanel has an enduring relationship with cinema, and this year supported the premiere of the Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis and supported several premiering films at the stage of production, including Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio (Chanel designed some of the wardrobe for the character played by Catherine Deneuve) as well as Maria, starring Chanel ambassador Anamaria Vartolomei.
“Cannes has become the new battlefield for the fashion groups,” says Olivier Bouchara, head of content of Vanity Fair France.
Return on investment
Saint Laurent doesn’t comment on the amount it paid to co-produce the films. Cinema is an industry with a longer-term return on investment (profits are more likely to come from TV rights than from box-office receipts), but it’s a money making business, especially with headliners. So if the film makes a profit, producers get dividends.
“Until very recently, most marketing money was considered an expense, because the only ways brands could communicate was through publishing and outdoor vehicles, etc,” says Sunshine’s Barnet. “We try to flip that, and build strategies that help brands move from a pure marketing-expenditure model to an entertainment-investment model. Ultimately, the entertainment property has to have the same craft and integrity the brands’ finest products do.”
She cites the example of Nike setting up a studio called Waffle Iron Entertainment, which produces cultural output that is derivative of what Nike represents: premium stories about sports and athletes.
Producing films by high-profile directors starring A-list actors increases the chance of selection in festivals like Cannes, which allows for impactful coverage — and ultimately, financial success. “Let’s be honest: it’s a budget, so it is easier to work with people who know how to make a film and have a vision that I love and respect,” Vaccarello told Vogue in an exclusive interview before Cannes. “But I’d like to extend what we do to young directors in the future.”
There is a mutual attraction. “Traditional sources of funding are drying up, so the film industry is increasingly interested in brands willing to pitch in,” says Variety’s Keslassy. “At the same time, brands are more and more refined in their ways of working with producers. Product placement can be prohibitive for audiences if it’s not done right. Production is an organic continuation of their way of promoting the brands, notably with celebrities. Conversely, it allows film producers to capitalise on the stars in their films to get financing. It’s a convergence of interests.”
Last year, some critics were wary of the commercialisation that could come from having such prominent luxury backers. While The Guardian praised Strange Way of Life as an “entertaining divertissement”, Indiewire noted its “double nature as a glorified YSL commercial”. However, Emilia Perez has so far received rave reviews. The integration of Saint Laurent in the artistic direction is subtle, not ostentatious, though in one scene, the character played by Gomez wears a T-shirt printed with the words ‘Rive Gauche’, which has become synonymous with the brand.
“He [Vaccarello] picks and curates the kind of stories that ladder up to his world, and they aren’t necessarily purely derivative of the Saint Laurent aesthetic but they’re close enough in the curation of what that story is trying to tell that it feels right to us as consumers,” observes Barnet. “[Producing films] is a learning process. It’s never a science, it’s an art.”
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