Fashion
Star Designer Quits and Turns $820,000 Into $12.3 Million
- Court says Saint Laurent underpaid Hedi Slimane for final year
- Kering also faces tax investigation at Gucci in Italy
The owner of brands such as Gucci and Balenciaga thought it could pay the king of skinny jeans less than $1 million net for his last year at Saint Laurent. They were wrong.
In designer Hedi Slimane’s lawsuit against the luxury group Kering SA, a French court ruled last week that he had been underpaid by as much as 9.3 million euros ($11.5 million) after taxes for his last year of service. In 2016, the 49-year-old had received net pay of 667,000 euros even after sales at Kering’s Yves Saint Laurent SAS division roughly tripled during the four years he was creative director.