“This is bullshit.” Such was Sabato De Sarno’s response to those who said “he just did a commercial collection” at his debut show for Gucci back in September 2023. Today, De Sarno’s abrupt exit from the brand seems like a bittersweet validation of his take. Because Gucci’s financial woes during his creative tenure have apparently provided ultimate proof that his collections were not, in the end, “commercial” — or at least not nearly “commercial” enough. And so came Kering’s pivot today from ancora to basta.
So who’s next at Gucci, as it looks to apply a fresh creative correction to its commercial performance? By now, we all know the drill. Changes in creative directorship at luxury’s best-known fashion houses create a rich vein of engagement online. Above-the-line speculation as to who might succeed De Sarno will prove irresistible, even when it’s wrong. Names will not only be mooted, but also posted and printed before Gucci discloses its next step (in fact, they already are being). We will only know for sure who Gucci’s next creative director will be when Gucci chooses to announce it.
So let’s ask another question begged by De Sarno’s departure: how transformative to the fortunes of a house can a new creative director really be? De Sarno himself was tasked with transformation when he replaced Alessandro Michele — who more than doubled Gucci’s sales to over €10 billion during his seven-year tenure, but exited as the hyper-growth began to slow.
In 2025, we will see designer debuts at big beast brands including Calvin Klein (Veronica Leoni), Tom Ford (Haider Ackermann), Givenchy (Sarah Burton), Dries Van Noten (Julian Klausner), Bottega Veneta (Louise Trotter), Celine (Michael Rider) and — at the biggest beast of all — Chanel (Matthieu Blazy). There are also tantalising debuts at smaller houses including Alberta Ferretti (Lorenzo Serafini), Fforme (Frances Howie) and Blumarine (David Koma). We just saw Peter Copping begin his stint at Lanvin, and following Kim Jones’s exit from Dior Men and Fendi, we know there must be more, as yet unannounced, creative director appointments to come. And yes, there are rumours (which Vogue Business will only report as and when they are confirmed) of change at other houses, too. All in all, that’s a lot of noise.
Fashion’s current cacophony of creative correction has reached this fever pitch as a strategy to galvanise sales during a period of wider economic malaise and global uncertainty. But is “newness” per se really such a hot metric during a slowdown? Luxury is an industry predicated on decadence, a core value, which, however rationalised, already sits uneasily in a moment of broader insecurity.
The luxury companies that have negotiated 2024 best are among the most stable in terms of brand identity, ethos and offer: these include Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli and Prada Group. As the founder of one independent fashion house told me last month: “It’s hard, a challenging moment, because everything is on us. But also, we can do what we know we need to do with all our experience and understanding of who we are.” Younger, fast-growing independent brands such as Jacquemus and Amiri are similarly closely anchored to a distinct and defined sense of identity.
Chanel appears on course to be added to this list of the most resilient, and yet it is also reacting to broader market conditions in a way that suggests it is by no means immune to them. Near the dawn of the last great luxury slowdown in December 2008, the company cut 200 jobs in Paris in what was seen then as an “ominous sign” for the industry more broadly. Similarly ominously, last month it cut 70 roles in the US, around 2.5 per cent of its workforce there, in order, it said, to “better adapt to the current economic challenges”.
Since that last slowdown began speeding up again at the dawn of the 2010s, the luxury industry has exploded, its growth fuelled by the emerging Chinese middle classes, the broadening of the industry’s reach and category offer globally, and, more recently, the rapid beyond-inflation price rises applied by houses to consumers who never seemed to become put off purchasing... until they were. Posting on LinkedIn as he departed LVMH before moving to Jil Sander this week, former Fendi CEO Serge Brunschwig observed: “The main enemy of every brand and every manager is success. Managing crisis is basic, managing success, ego, hubris…” Especially when the conditions for that success so suddenly evaporate.
The ultimate failure of De Sarno’s “commercial” collections to catalyse recovery at Gucci suggests that changing creative directors is in itself not enough to revive commercial performance when the market is so limp. Meanwhile, the relative success of houses that have stayed unswervingly true to their core identities, and which are staffed and run by people who are deeply embedded in those brands’ cultures, further underlines that change for change’s sake is a high-risk strategy in the current climate. So where will creative correction work in 2025? Buckle up: we are about to find out.
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