Review of Saint Laurent Respiro 2026 Ad Campaign by Photographer Henrik Purienne with models Jenn du Puy, Loli Bahia, Mona Tougaard, SJ, and Vittoria Ceretti
Luxury has spent years engineering desire to the point of suffocation. Saint Laurent’s Respiro campaign proposes a deep breath, though naturally the house takes its oxygen somewhere along the Mediterranean, dressed in gold charms and oversized sunglasses. Conceived under designer Anthony Vaccarello and directed by Purienne, with casting by Samuel Ellis Scheinman, the 2026 campaign features Jenn du Puy, Loli Bahia, Mona Tougaard, SJ, and Vittoria Ceretti. Its title, meaning “breath,” supplies both the premise and the provocation. Can luxury still feel spontaneous once every glint of sunlight has learned where the camera is?
Purienne builds the campaign from the visual grammar of a half-remembered holiday. Grain softens the evidence. Bodies recline on pebbled beaches, emerge through reflections, and occupy interiors filled with ruffled gowns, upholstered chairs, and the faintly eccentric residue of old money at leisure. A white plastic chair sits among coastal rocks with comic authority. Nearby, a raffia tote holds a thermos as casually as though Saint Laurent had simply wandered down for a swim. These objects puncture the fantasy just enough to give it social texture. Pleasure appears improvised, even when its improvisation has clearly received excellent art direction.
That friction furthers Vaccarello’s evolving account of the house. Saint Laurent has always understood escape as a form of self-invention, from Yves Saint Laurent’s fascination with distant geographies to Vaccarello’s own nocturnal figures standing against immense landscapes. Respiro brings that instinct into daylight. The severity of black leather loosens beside lace, swimwear, translucent blouses, and extravagant ruffles. Gold fish swim along a handbag chain. Coin belts turn the body into a private archive of souvenirs. Accessories function as talismans, carrying the suggestion that taste is accumulated through experience and worn with little explanation.
The campaign’s finest images allow elegance to acquire some sand under its fingernails. The grain, flare, wet hair, and awkward coastal furniture create a persuasive sense of intimacy, while the products remain exceptionally legible. That balance demands considerable precision. The bags sit against bare skin like jewelry, and the eyewear becomes a mask through which each subject controls her availability. Jenn du Puy, Loli Bahia, Mona Tougaard, and Vittoria Ceretti bring distinct shades of remove, while SJ introduces a masculine presence whose stillness makes the surrounding sensuality feel almost ceremonial. Samuel Ellis Scheinman’s casting gives Purienne’s languor enough variation to sustain the sequence.
Fluency brings its own expectations. Purienne’s sun-struck eroticism is instantly recognizable, and several compositions return to a familiar vocabulary of crouched women, cropped anatomy, and voyeuristic proximity. The strongest portraits grant their subjects a palpable interior life. Reflections interrupt access, sunglasses withhold the gaze, and voluminous fabric lets the wearer command the room. Elsewhere, the women become elegant surfaces for accessories, which narrows the campaign’s larger idea of liberation. Today’s audience reads the authorship of desire with unusual acuity. A campaign built around breathing invites fuller agency, mutuality, and the sense that pleasure belongs first to the people pictured.
Still, Respiro understands that aspiration has grown tired of appearing immaculate. Its luxury is persuasive because it seems touched, worn, warmed, and occasionally abandoned on a rock. There is a little Colette in that appetite for sun, skin, ornament, and the intelligence of pleasure. Saint Laurent turns a holiday into an argument for cultivated instinct, suggesting that freedom can survive its encounter with commerce if the image leaves enough air around the fantasy. The campaign takes a handsome breath. The lingering question is whose lungs, and whose desire, will shape the next one?
Saint Laurent Creative Director | Anthony Vaccarello
Photographer | Henrik Purienne
Models | Jenn du Puy, Loli Bahia, Mona Tougaard, SJ, and Vittoria Ceretti
Casting Director | Samuel Ellis Scheinman