Fashion Industry Top Creative Directors
At the highest reaches of the industry there’s a new ethos at play as creative directors move between houses and inject their own take on future directions.
A bracing game of creative director musical chairs is afoot, and its impact may well be far reaching when it comes to the way fashion reconfigures its pace, purpose, creativity, entwinement with celebrity and modes of dress.
Last month the frisson of anticipation around who Louis Vuitton might choose as the successor to the late Virgil Abloh to head up its menswear collections culminated in the appointment of Grammy-award winning, ultimate multi-hyphenate and consummate style icon, Pharrell Williams. The news, of course, lit up the internet and further emphasised how deeply fashion has become entwined with culture, creativity and hype. As Williams told the Financial Times last year, “Fashion and music is like time and space, you can’t have one without the other.”
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It fits, too, with how Louis Vuitton tapped Colm Dillane, aka the founder of KidSuper, a Brooklyn-based streetwear and creative agency, to guest design the maison’s menswear collection in January. With a spectacle that included a live performance by Spanish singer Rosalia and a set design from French filmmakers Michel and Olivier Gondry, it embodied what Michael Burke, LV’s outgoing CEO, described as the increasing currency of “physical participation” in the fashion show.
In an interview with industry publication Women’s Wear Daily, Burke said: “It just makes it more relatable. It makes it more Instagrammable. It’s the live performance aspect that drives reaction … you show your inspiration in a way that’s very engaging.”
The idea of the guest designer as a way to infuse new creativity is being explored by Jean Paul Gaultier to great acclaim following the retirement of the maverick couturier in 2020. At the most recent haute couture week in January, Haider Ackermann, a favourite of actors Tilda Swinton and Timothée Chalamet, was the fourth designer to be tapped to collaborate with the couture house. The melding of his striking colour combinations and interesting tailoring with Jean Paul Gaultier’s great showmanship made for a well-realised, and well-received, collection.
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Meanwhile, another plum position in the luxury fashion world has just been filled, with Sabato De Sarno, a close associate of Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino and a long-term behind the scenes player in Italy’s major fashion houses, taking over from Alessandro Michele at Gucci. In a statement, François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering (the group that owns Gucci as well as the likes of Saint Laurent and Balenciaga), said: “With Sabato De Sarno at the creative helm, we are confident that the House will continue both to influence fashion and culture through highly desirable products and collections, and to bring a singular and contemporary perspective to modern luxury.”
The appointment may well represent a shift in the rather subjective matter of taste. Michele, plucked from the Gucci design team, was the creative director of Gucci for seven years. His magpie-like romanticism not only turbocharged the fortunes of the luxury Italian fashion house but turned the needle on fashion, with his maximalist designs upending the long-held preoccupation with minimalism and the so-called “normcore” trend, a mode of plain dressing interpreted as a reaction to the global financial crisis of the mid-aughts.
It may be worth nothing that, with another recession looming, British Vogue isn’t the only one to predict a return to “quiet luxury” in 2023. British designer Phoebe Philo, who attracted much ardour for her minimalist-with-a-twist clothes for the thinking woman while at Celine, is launching her long-promised eponymous label. In February the brand launched an Instagram account and announced the first collection would be available on the Phoebe Philo website in September.
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Another major move: after his London fashion week show in September (delayed out of respect for the passing of Queen Elizabeth II), Riccardo Tisci left Burberry and was replaced by Daniel Lee. Another relative unknown plucked from the design department, Lee rocketed Bottega Veneta to cult status during his tenure from 2018 to 2021. His first collection was shown during London Fashion Week in late February.
But it’s also Lee’s replacement at Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy, who is setting the tone and mode for dress right now with his incredibly luxurious take on what he calls “perverse banality”. This was embodied by Blazy sending supermodel Kate Moss down the runway in a pair of “jeans” and plaid “flannel” during Milan Fashion Week in October that were actually crafted from exceptional leather. A reminder that in fashion things aren’t always what they seem.
There’s been a slew of other interesting, potentially dial-shifting new appointments elsewhere too. They include Rhuigi Villaseñor at Bally and Maximilian Davis at Ferragamo. Both designers already had a following for their own cool brands, having both made their debut during Milan Fashion Week in October last year. Meanwhile, British designer Harris Reed, a favourite of style icons such as Harry Styles and The Crown’s Emma Corrin, has already offered a sneak peek of what to expect from his newly announced appointment as creative director of French fashion house Nina Ricci with custom looks created for Adele’s Las Vegas residency. And Ludovic de Saint Sernin, known for his sensuous and sexy gender-fluid designs, debuted his creative direction for Ann Demeulemeester during Paris Fashion Week in March.
Of course fashion is built on the cult of newness, of seeking out the cool. As Roger Leong, senior curator at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, notes, there has always been serious kudos, and anticipation, in the appointment of a fresh new master at an established house. “Creative directors have come and gone for decades, particularly when the brand has such huge cachet and prestige,” he says. “Yves Saint Laurent was hailed the saviour of French fashion in 1958, when he took over the reins after Christian Dior’s sudden death. By 1960 he was out the door, a move many attribute to his ‘Beat’ collection being too edgy for Dior’s clientele. Saint Laurent got his own back through a lawsuit that funded the opening of his own couture house. But fashion is about change and a new creative director is often the best way to revitalise a brand and explore new opportunities. We have seen how Virgil Abloh injected a refreshing poetry into Louis Vuitton menswear that celebrated the joy of inclusiveness. At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri has broken decades of tradition by turning it into a brand that stands for feminism as much as femininity.”
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Luca Solca, senior research analyst, luxury goods, at Bernstein private wealth management group says the increased pace of fashion cycles has meant shorter tenures for creative directors. WWD recently found more than half the creative directors at heritage brands had a tenure of less than five years.
“One of the things we have seen in the past five years is that luxury and fashion are moving faster,” says Solca. “Trends sustain for a shorter amount of time. Hence the need for brands to be on the front foot in terms of rejuvenating their aesthetic proposition. In order to do that, the average tenure of a creative director is shortening. Like most artists, they tend to produce variations on a theme. This is only good to a point, when brands need to wow consumers and keep them coming to their stores. More third-party collaborations and new blood have been the tools brands have used to face this issue.”
Federica Levato, a Milan-based luxury consultant at Bain, says new appointments reflect a changing world.“[The] world has experienced important changes in [the] last years, with Covid accelerating many ongoing trends eventually affecting consumer value systems, behaviours and preferences,” she says. “Also, luxury fashion brands have been evolving their value proposition in order to keep up with these changes while anticipating and shaping new trends. Brands are taking bold steps to remain relevant (or regain relevance) with consumers, surfing the zeitgeist while setting the stage for the future. The multiple exits and beginnings represent a confirmation of this and the intrinsic desire of the luxury fashion brands to be the cultural avant-garde.”
Melinda O’Rouke, a strategic adviser who has worked in-house for such brands as Chanel and Prada, agrees significant changes in the world of fashion can have several interpretations. They include shifts in consumer preferences, and as a response to changes in economical and societal values such as sustainability, diversity and improved digital capabilities in things such as e-commerce and technology.
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“The luxury fashion industry, like any other, is cyclical and therefore changes are expected. Overall, these changes are an indication that the luxury market is shifting and keeping relevant by evolving,” O’Rourke says. “Companies are looking for new ways to innovate, reach new customers and drive growth, and these changes in leadership are important flags to the market ... of where the forward focus is going.”
In any case it’s a guarantee that the game of fashion musical chairs will continue, even as the players, the prize and the rules change.