Saint Laurent, the Oscars and the ‘Emilia Pérez’ Problem

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.”