It’s official: after ten years at the helm of Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello has announced his departure. His tenure at the house has been one of the most successful in recent history, honing a precise and razor-sharp vision across his menswear and womenswear shows, season after season. Vaccarello’s decade-long stint is one of the longer tenures we’ve seen from creative directors as of late, coming just after the infamous musical chairs of fashion house movements.

Rumours began to swirl of his departure following his most recent show, an extravagantly gilded celebration of ten years, presented under the glimmer of a series of golden chandeliers and backdropped by the Eiffel Tower. In a significant passing of the baton, the Belgian designer handed a set of keys to his son Luca after his final bow, as Charlotte Gainsbourg took to the stage to perform an exclusive track, delicately repeating the lyrics: “You are so much, Yves Saint Laurent.” It was a momentous swansong, refashioning iconic silhouettes from the brand’s archive in varying shades of gold.

Vaccarello’s tenure will leave a lasting legacy, not only by expertly crafting a design language that honoured six decades of Saint Laurent history, but also by turning the house into a cultural titan. His shows became the must-see event at Paris Fashion Week, and if he showed elsewhere, you followed – taking the runway to Morocco’s Agafay Desert, Malibu’s Paradise Cove and a Venetian Island. The campaign stars and friends of the house remain the most sought-after individuals across fashion, film, music and art, with the likes of Zoë Kravitz, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Hailey Bieber and Austin Butler remaining in Vaccarello’s close circle. Fashion aside, the designer also founded Saint Laurent Productions, establishing the house as the first brand to serve as a film production agency. And just like everything else Vaccarello touched, those productions turned out to be golden, with credits including the Oscar-winning Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard, Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother and David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds.

That leaves us asking the question: who could replace Vaccarello after such a storied and defining tenure? As of yet, Saint Laurent’s new creative director has not been announced, but whoever it is will be handed a ready-made model to make something brilliant.