Normally, the Sunday before Paris Fashion Week would be a day of frenetic activity for the Saint Laurent atelier and for its designer, Anthony Vaccarello. Normally, they would have only two more days to get ready for their fashion show, which has become one of the must-see opening events of the French collections. Normally, they would be rushing around, finalizing clothes, hair, makeup.
But this Sunday, a group of Saint Laurent executives, including Mr. Vaccarello and most likely Cédric Charbit, the chief executive, and Francesca Bellettini, the deputy chief executive of Kering, Saint Laurent’s parent company, plan to be in Los Angeles, at the Dolby Theater.
“Emilia Pérez,” a film from their new initiative, Saint Laurent Productions, has been nominated for 13 Oscars — the most for any non-English language movie ever — and its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, has made history as the first openly trans woman to be nominated for best actress. And in anticipation of what was supposed to be the scene of a great triumph, Saint Laurent had postponed its show from the first day of Paris Fashion Week to the last.
But then came the tweet crisis. And then, instead of signaling a whole new stage in the fashion-film relationship, “Emilia Pérez” became yet another example of the risks that can accrue to a brand when it gets too close to a (fallible) star.
To recap: In 2023, Saint Laurent started Saint Laurent Productions. It was the first time a fashion brand had created a subsidiary not just to dress stars for the red carpet, but to invest in their feature projects.
Along with David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds” and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Strange Way of Life,” “Emilia Pérez” was one of its first projects. Mr. Vaccarello was credited as the costume artistic director on the movie. Saint Laurent clothes played pivotal roles in the wardrobes of various characters, including a faux fur coat worn by Selena Gomez and a red suit worn by Zoe Saldaña.
Since the film’s premiere last year at Cannes, where it won the jury award as well as the best actress award (which was shared by the cast), almost all of the stars have worn Saint Laurent at major red carpet moments. Ms. Saldaña, Ms. Gomez and Ms. Gascón wore Saint Laurent at Cannes and at the London Film Festival. Ms. Saldaña and Ms. Gascón wore Saint Laurent at the Golden Globes, where the film won four awards, and Ms. Gascón appeared on multiple notable dress lists (including that of The New York Times). Saint Laurent created an art book about the making of the film and hosted a book signing in its Los Angeles store.
The relationship was, it seemed, a perfect match: proof that after decades of dressing celebrities, contracting with celebrities as brand ambassadors and making mini-movies-as-advertisements starring celebrities, it was time for fashion to put its money where the projects were. L’Officiel speculated about whether other brands would soon follow Saint Laurent’s lead.
But then the journalist Sarah Hagi discovered years-old racist tweets by Ms. Gascón. Netflix, which had distributed the film, quickly distanced itself from Ms. Gascón; so did the director, Jacques Audiard. She tried her own crisis management, which Netflix disavowed. She seemed to disappear from the promotional tour, even as the furor proved a drag on the film’s momentum. (She will, however, be at the Oscars.)
Saint Laurent kept silent throughout the brouhaha — and did not respond to requests for comment for this piece. But suddenly, the idea that an increasingly interdependent relationship between fashion and film might represent the future of the two industries was cast in a wholly different light.
“It makes sense for global luxury brands to find global audiences via art, movies and sport,” said Luca Solca, the chief luxury goods analyst at the research firm Bernstein. And for a brand like Saint Laurent, working with edgy directors like Mr. Cronenberg, Mr. Almodovar and Jacques Audiard of “Emilia Pérez” creates a halo effect of artistic cool for more mundane items like handbags that is impossible to quantify.
“But clearly, things can go the wrong way, too,” Mr. Solca said. “Sometimes, you step on a rake. And it hurts.”
The “Emilia Pérez” debacle is not the first time the risks of being associated with human beings with potentially problematic preferences and pasts have been brought home to fashion. Indeed, third parties are what Alla Valente, an associate at the market research company Forrester, called “businesses’ biggest risk-management blind spot.”
This has been true since long before Ye sent Adidas and Balenciaga into a long-term defensive crouch with his antisemitic rants. In 2005, Kate Moss was caught on camera apparently sniffing cocaine, and Burberry and Chanel canceled her contracts. In 2021, Lanvin and Pandora cut ties with the Chinese actor Zhang Zhehan when he was photographed in front of a Japanese shrine to World War II. But as the cost of doing business has risen, so have the stakes.
The crisis consultant Risa Heller said that on a scale of damage, the “Emilia Pérez” fallout should be relatively limited for Saint Laurent, given that most consumers did not yet associate the fashion brand with the film, but that there was cost in what might have been.
As Ms. Heller said, “all brands are trying to figure out new ways to get in front of new consumers.” Film must have seemed the perfect answer, and in a sector reeling from the rise of streamers and the growing gap between blockbusters and indies, fashion must have seemed a highly attractive white knight.
Now, however, even as Saint Laurent Productions continues full steam ahead, with “Parthenope” by Paolo Sorrentino and projects with the directors Claire Denis and Jim Jarmusch in the works, and even as Ms. Saldaña fronts a new campaign for the house (and wears Saint Laurent as she continues to collect awards), other brands may think twice about following their lead.
Despite the existence of “reputational risk insurance,” or “disgrace insurance,” which, Susan Scafidi of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University said, “can be part of other insurance policies or a separate policy designed to cover costs of crisis management and related losses,” human risk is almost impossible to avoid.
“This was probably on no one’s bingo card of what could go wrong,” Ms. Heller said of the Gascón backlash. “But from now on, every brand will have to add it to the list.”
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