In Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1913–27), time is a fluid construct, an illusion. The seven-volume novel unravels the musings and recollections of an unnamed narrator for whom even the whiff of a madeleine calls up a heady wash of reminiscences. “The memory of a particular image,” he decides, “is but regret for a particular moment.”

The French classic has enraptured readers for decades since its publication—Yves Saint Laurent among them. His work, much like Lost Time, looked back at the past, if only to forge a way forward. “Like Proust, I’m fascinated most of all by my perceptions of a world in awesome transition,” he reflected in a catalogue accompanying his 1983 Met retrospective. “And my heart has always been divided between the vestals of constancy and the avatars of change.”

Fittingly, Saint Laurent’s new holiday collection and campaign is taking a page from Proust’s landmark work and its founder’s choice read. Led by the house’s creative director Anthony Vaccarello, the project, titled As Time Goes By, features a series of playful short films, directed by artist Nadia Lee Cohen, that meditate on time and memory, with help from a starry cast and an uncanny Proustian irony.

Charlotte Gainsbourg in “Memory” from Saint Laurent’s As Time Goes By. Photo courtesy of Saint Laurent.

Each of these clips leads with a theme and a haunting voiceover by Charlotte Gainsbourg reading from Lost Time. “Desire,” for one, sees Chloë Sevigny preoccupied with a book in a well-appointed hotel room, before a housekeeper, played by Joey King, arrives to upend her peace. “We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire,” Gainsbourg narrates, “but gradually our desire changes.”

Cooper Koch and Awar in “Togetherness” from Saint Laurent’s As Time Goes By. Photo courtesy of Saint Laurent.

In “Togetherness,” Cooper Koch and Awar are seen absorbed in their Proust, even while a party goes on outside their bedroom door (“To be with people one loves, to speak to them, not to speak to them, it is all the same”); while “Time” has John Waters playing a man escaping a falling snow, only to be drawn back out into the cold (“The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic…”).

In the series of vignettes, which also include turns from Addison Rae, Travis Bennett, and Gainsbourg herself, is captured a sense of modernity as much as eternity. And of course, Saint Laurent’s handsome designs feature throughout.

Addison Rae in “Dreaming” from Saint Laurent’s As Time Goes By. Photo courtesy of Saint Laurent.

This latest exercise expands on Vaccarello’s cinematic aspirations for the house. It follows campaigns overseen by the likes of auteur Wong Kar-Wai and author Bret Easton Ellis, as well as the launch of Saint Laurent Productions, the label’s film production banner. So far, the division has produced outings from Pedro Almodóvar’s short film Strange Way of Life (2023) to Cannes darling, the Jacques Audiard-directed Emilia Perez (2024).

“I always wanted to have the best realisateurs to link to the name of Saint Laurent,” Vaccarello told Vogue in May. “For us at Saint Laurent, it gives us new ways to communicate. In doing those films, the name of Saint Laurent stays forever. When the name is on a billboard, it’s so fast—one month later, we forgot about it—but in 20 years the name Saint Laurent is still there.”