PARIS — As editors, celebrity ambassadors, buyers and more descended on Paris for the start of the autumn-winter collections Monday, the industry braced for a crucial test.
New designers are set to debut their visions for Givenchy, Tom Ford and Dries Van Noten this week, kicking off a fashion cycle that will be defined by creative reboots. Later this year, Chanel’s new artistic director Matthieu Blazy will also show his first collection for the couture and beauty giant. Kering is set to name a new Gucci designer imminently, and sources say LVMH is preparing to reshuffle its creative ranks, elevating Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson to the top creative job at Dior and naming a new womenswear designer at Fendi.
LVMH’s Celine, Kering’s Bottega Veneta and OTB’s Maison Margiela are all also onboarding new creative directors, while the departure of Jil Sander’s designers was announced last week. Industry sources say creative shakeups may also be in the works at Versace and Bally.
The industry-wide reset will test more than the merits of any one designer. Rather, it will show whether a longstanding model of tie-ups between marquee creative directors and well-funded heritage houses — set during Karl Lagerfeld’s remaking of Chanel in the 1980s and pushed to new heights by LVMH in the 1990s with Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton and John Galliano at Dior — can continue to fuel fashion’s marketing machine.
Brands are seeking a refreshed product offer and marketing message to cut through a saturated landscape, particularly on social media, at a difficult time for the sector. After flying high during the pandemic, many luxury brands are currently struggling amid slowing economic growth and the hangover from high inflation in key markets, and as the global bourgeoisie return their focus to spending on travel, restaurants and other fast-growing categories like skin treatments and weight-loss drugs.
The industry’s sales fell just 2 percent last year following years of rapid growth, according to Bain & Company. But steeper declines in China — long the sector’s most reliable growth engine — as well as difficulties at leading players like LVMH and Kering have made it commonplace to refer to the current moment as a “crisis.”
For some houses, balancing ever-greater global visibility with cultural relevance and an aura of preciousness and exclusivity has become increasingly difficult. To make matters worse, rampant price hikes in recent years have prompted even the wealthiest buyers to wonder whether splashing out on a new look is still worth it, while many middle-class buyers are pulling back from the industry’s core handbag category even as an occasional splurge.
In a bid to keep up topline growth and maintain a steady stream of talking points on social media, brands have added merch lines covering everything from skiwear to sneakers, including many items that look broadly similar across brands. Meanwhile, reports of brands sub-contracting to sweatshops (including at prestigious “Made in Italy” names), suggest luxury labels do not guarantee higher quality and ethics than fast fashion.
“Luxury is meant to be a dream for all and a reality for the few. But the few only buy into it if everyone wants it,” said Claire Gallon, partner at marketing advisory The Salmon Consulting. At the same time, the notion of ‘Veblen goods’ — commodities that become more desirable the more expensive they are, typically due to their social clout — ”has reached its limit,” she added. “People won’t aspire to an impossible dream, so the equation is kind of broken.”
“The real crisis is about what it means to buy fashion,” said Alice Bouleau, partner at executive search firm Sterling International. “When you have so many collections that have the same products, and not really authenticity or a point of view — and then you find out that the brands aren’t even always producing ethically — that’s creating a lack of trust, not just for individual brands but for the sector.”
“Brands that try to please everyone in the end are pleasing no one,” Bouleau added.
A handful of brands are managing to outperform fashion’s current slump, but those names could be considered as exceptions that prove the rule: the likes of Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli hardly depend on seasonal fashion buzz, and haven’t let prices get ahead of the perceived value of their craftsmanship or timeless style (not to mention the well-padded budgets of their top-end clientele).
By contrast, several houses that embarked on creative reboots in recent years like Gucci and Burberry have been hit hard by the current slowdown. Changing designers and CEOs has allowed both brands to reset the clock on delivering long-awaited turnarounds. But frequent turnover and heavy-handed strategy pivots have fuelled scepticism, making it harder for their creative revamps to gain traction. LVMH’s Givenchy, Richemont’s Chloé, Lanvin and Tod’s have also seen their prestige dented by frequent turnover.
Givenchy, Tom Ford
Still, companies are betting on creative resets to re-energise consumers, starting with the runway and red carpet before trickling down through marketing and stores.
At Givenchy on Thursday, it’s hoped that former Alexander McQueen creative director Sarah Burton can bring clarity, technical mastery and stability to a house whose history has been marked by frequent creative change. The brand’s image has ping-ponged since the 1990s from the extravagant couture of John Galliano and Lee McQueen to the democratic pop luxury of Riccardo Tisci, to the pared-back, mid-century inspired glamour of Clare Waight Keller — before Matthew Williams sought to connect the dots with a slick and utilitarian, high-low style. Elle Fanning’s gown at the Oscars Sunday — a white lace number strongly inspired by a 1952 design — was the first peek at what Burton’s reset may have in store.
The designer’s steady leadership helped grow Alexander McQueen into a global brand when it might have fizzled following its founder’s 2010 death, easing Lee McQueen’s vision towards something softer and more romantic while still packing a narrative punch. In an industry whose ranks of leading woman designers appear to be dwindling (since the ouster of Virginie Viard at Chanel last year, and reports of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s pending departure from Dior), many will be cheering Burton on.
Still, convincing the market that Givenchy’s latest iteration will stick — and is therefore worth adopting — is one of fashion’s toughest briefs. The fact that the label is a side-show for owner LVMH, contributing less than 1 percent of estimated sales, hardly helps. There have been few signs thus far that the group plans to invest in the kind of shock-and-awe rebrand that allowed Celine to nearly triple its estimated sales under Hedi Slimane (though in the current economic climate, the group may simply be waiting to confirm early results).
Fashion insiders are also likely to cheer on Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford on Wednesday night: the Franco-Colombian designer has long been exalted by critics for the irreproachable, contemporary chic of his languid tailoring and deft colour work. But at Tom Ford— as at Dries Van Noten, where company veteran Julian Klausner is set to show his debut womenswear collection the same day — designers face the challenge of leading brands whose founders are still towering figures.
Both businesses can lean on a burgeoning trade in perfume and beauty for additional support (Dries Van Noten is owned by Puig; Tom Ford by Estée Lauder). But their fashion propositions are heavily exposed to fading wholesale channels, and both have struggled to rein in rampant discounting — a growing problem in an age of instant online price comparison.
Lengthy Turnarounds
The industry has seen time and again that it takes more than a buzzy runway vision to get a business back on track. Alessandro Michele joined Valentino with an army of designers, merchandisers and marketeers last year, allowing the house to rapidly overhaul its collections and campaigns. But industry sources say his reboot of the Roman brand is still finding its footing financially. Adrian Appiolaza’s first three shows for Moschino were well-received last year, but the Aeffe-owned brand’s sales remained down sharply in the first nine months of the year.
“A designer revamp can only be a success if you give them the tools to succeed, if they have the time and space,” said publicist Lucien Pagès, founder of the eponymous Paris communications firm. “People are expecting too much; they are looking for a superhero. They want a designer whose first show will blow everyone away, while respecting the heritage, while bringing something new.”
It doesn’t always help that social media has widened the audience for debut shows, turning them into a global arena for the public to play at pollice verso along with buyers and press. Rather than hoping for a definitive “thumbs up” from the crowd, a healthier expectation for a runway debut would be a sense of promise, Pagès says. “At this stage you just need to feel like the basic material is there, that there’s a margin for things to go further and get better, and for the designer to build synergy with the house.”
A Shifting Template
On Loewe’s TikTok account, comedian Chris Zou wears a tomato-shaped hat in his latest self-taped video roasting the brand for the sales tactics and storytelling surrounding its popular “tomato leaves” candle. Another recent post shows Sofia Altuna shamelessly ogling actor Drew Starkey in a pair of Loewe sunglasses.
The co-published videos are genuinely entertaining — and hint at how luxury brands are thinking beyond traditional formats like runway shows and celebrity campaigns, building entertainment and culture into their business models (Not to mention novel products at more accessible price points, like candles priced from €95).
Loewe is staging a presentation rather than a full-on runway show this season, as sources say creative director Jonathan Anderson is already busily building a team at Dior. If confirmed, the nomination will be a consecration of Anderson’s curatorial approach to fashion, where runway collections are infused with a collage of cultural influences, and followed up by credible engagements across art, design and cinema. He and Loewe contributed costumes for two of Luca Guadagnino’s recent films.
That isn’t to say the brand has neglected the catwalk —drawing of-the-moment stars like Greta Lee and Josh O’Connor to runway spectacles featuring some of fashion’s most unsellable, if attention-grabbing, designs: hoopskirts, windswept coats frozen into rigid shells, shoes with actual grass growing out of them.
“Loewe have been really smart in the way they approach different communities. Their output can be very different across different formats and topics, but there’s always that sense of what they stand for: this extreme creativity, quirkiness and craft,” Bouleau said.
A similar paradigm shift is underway at Chanel, whose new designer Matthieu Blazy clinched fashion’s most coveted job during a star turn at Bottega Veneta. Blazy and his team created mass impact through a deftly curated mix of niche and big-bang activations: design collaborations with Gaetano Pesce and Zanotta; placing A-list ambassadors like A$AP Rocky, Michelle Yeoh and Julianne Moore alongside odd-ball picks like Jools Lebron (originator of the “very demure” meme).
Brands benefit from leaning into not just a new vision for product, “but the network of friends and celebrities, the broader ecosystem a designer can help refresh,” Gallon said.
Still, “companies need to think carefully not just about what to change, but what should stay the same with a new designer,” she added. “Brands need strong values, a strong CEO and strong artistic director to work hand-in-hand. You can’t put everything on the creative director’s shoulders.”
Getting that balance right is often the trickiest part of onboarding a new creative chief.
“A lot of brands use their rear mirrors, designing collections based on past performance, and their side mirrors — benchmarking what other brands are doing — and resist actually producing newness. The problem with that approach is that it isn’t measuring the cost of missed opportunities,” Bouleau said. “Brands need to trust their investment, and give enough freedom to the creative director.”
