Creative Directors in 2024: In or out?

By George Shi ‘24.5

Fig, 1: Manuele Menconi, “Alexander McQueen, The Essential Biography of an Ancient Regime Style Revolutionary,” Elle Decor, 2018.

Last year was a tumultuous one for the fashion industry. First, the growth of major luxury fashion houses halted. In October, Kering, one of the biggest luxury groups, announced its 2024 Q3 revenue. Affected by continued weakness in the Asia-Pacific market, the Q3 revenue of Kering’s cash cow, Gucci, plunged 25% to 1.64 billion euros (1). Other brands, such as Yves Saint Laurent, dropped 12%, and Balenciaga dropped 14%. The Q3 revenue of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE (LVMH), another luxury goods conglomerate, also dropped 2%.

Second, creative directors of prominent fashion houses experienced an unprecedented change. In early December, Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) published an article that inferred the current creative director of Bottega Veneta, Matthew Blazy, may become the successor to Virginie Viard for Chanel (2). Earlier this year, we saw the appointment of Sabato De Sarno at Gucci after Alessandro Michele left. Sarah Burton was replaced by Seán McGirr for Alexander McQueen, and Kim Jones left Fendi. From Dior to Fendi and Chanel to Maison Margiela, the big fashion groups seem to have less patience for creative directors after a rise in pressure from stakeholders.

In 2018, creative directors were understood as the key drivers for brands. LVMH and Kering even battled over them. In 2018, LVMH appointed top industry-recognized designers such as Nicolas Ghesquière, Raf Simons, and Kim Jones, while also recruiting rising young talents like Jonathan Anderson. The Kering Group, on the other hand, focused on developing star designers internally. Both Alessandro Michele, who boldly transformed the old Gucci, and Daniel Lee, who maintained Celine’s legacy, became industry stars almost immediately upon launching their first collections. 

This past October, Celine announced Hedi Slimane’s departure after seven years as creative director for the brand. In 2018, LVMH hired Slimane with the promise of total freedom and control over the creative process at Celine. What happened? There are a lot of rumors about the “breakup” between LVMH and Slimane. One of the most widely spread rumors alludes to disagreements regarding Slimane’s degree of control over product creativity. With the exile of Slimane, we are witnessing one of the largest shifts in the current fashion houses: Logos over creative directors.

In other words, fashion houses are becoming depersonalized. We cannot deny that these genius designers always left strong personal aesthetic marks on fashion houses. In the 1990s, John Galliano’s Dior shows exhibited “ferocious creativity.” He created theatrical and wistful, dream-like runways. Other iconic designers such as Michele and Phoebe Philo were known respectively for their maximalist, Rococo style monograms, and chic minimalism. They left a significant archive for successors to expand upon. 

These genius designers are rare, so it is always disappointing to see them leave due to changes in the tonality of a brand. Ultimately, fashion houses are like finance companies: they are risk-averse. By depersonalizing and erasing strong individual aesthetics that come with creative directors, brands can ensure that their image will remain consistent. This strategy also prevents consumers from establishing emotional dependence on one specific star-designer. Nowadays, it is all about the brand, not the designer. 

Think of Hermés, for example; what is the first thing that pops into your mind? Probably not the current designer, but the Kelly or Birkin bags. Their classic and iconic status seems to be what other luxury brands are chasing---a desire to create luxury goods rather than fashion products. Luxury goods are characterized by scarcity, timelessness, and durability, while the latter relies on ephemeral, constantly changing cyclical trends. By eliminating the temporality of individual designers, fashion brands are attempting to “luxurize” their existing fashion products and make them become classic items. 

Luxury brands must operate on a balanced foundation of creative uncertainty and business certainty. By synthesizing consumer demands, market trends, and product life cycle considerations, brands can roughly calculate controllable business volume, leaving the rest to creative expression. Sometimes, creativity can propel a brand skyward, like Gucci during Alessandro Michele’s era. However, when luck isn’t favorable, solid merchandise operation strategies can ensure stable brand revenue. 

In the end, it seems the importance of creative designers has been significantly diluted. At a marketing level, brands are still striving to be vibrant and distinctive, but they no longer worship designers or praise individuality. If fashion faithfully reflects the trends of the times, then this era appears increasingly youthful on the surface while growing increasingly aged at its core. 

Footnotes:

1) “Revenue for the Third Quarter of 2024.” Kering, 2024.

2) Luisa Zargani, “Sources Say Carven’s Louise Trotter Could Be Headed to Bottega Veneta,” Women’s Wear Daily, 2024.