On Monday, Kering appointed a new CEO, Luca de Meo, who will join from carmaker Renault in September. The hope is that his experience from outside of the fashion industry could provide a welcome shake-up for the struggling conglomerate. Should other industry players follow suit?
“To prepare this new step of our development, we need someone with a fresh vision, a new perspective on the luxury market,” said Kering’s François-Henri Pinault (who is keeping his role as chair while de Meo succeeds him as CEO) in a call with analysts following the announcement. “Looking outside of the industry was something important, not only for the group, but for this moment of the industry.” Kering’s share price jumped following de Meo’s appointment.
The luxury group confirmed speculations reported by a number of media outlets this weekend. Pinault will retain his role as Kering chair.
De Meo isn’t the first exec to join a luxury fashion company from another industry. However, recruiting from the automotive world is less common; instead, fashion tends to look to the fashion-adjacent beauty or consumer goods industries for fresh leadership thinking. In 2022, Leena Nair, who was previously Unilever’s chief human resource officer, joined Chanel as CEO. In 2023, Stella McCartney appointed Amandine Ohayon as CEO, who spent almost two decades at L’Oreal. In 2024, former Procter Gamble (P&G) executive Ilaria Resta joined Audemars Piguet as CEO, and Marc Jacobs appointed Kristin Patrick as chief marketing officer, who previously held positions at accessories retailer Claire’s, Pepsi-Cola and Playboy Enterprises. Toni Belloni, who spent two decades at LVMH, eventually as group managing director, joined from P&G, while Louis Vuitton CEO Pietro Beccari started out in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) at Reckitt, Parmalat and Henkel.
The luxury industry experienced its first slowdown (aside from Covid) in 2024, as consumer demand weakened amid macro uncertainty and steep price increases. Some experts say that during times of downturn, a bolder leadership move may be necessary. “Any industry that continues to just talk to itself all the time risks becoming boring and out of touch, and a sector like ours needs to be re-energised,” says Karen Harvey, founder and CEO of Karen Harvey Consulting. “You still need industry experts to execute on the business — you can’t teach fashion or product overnight — but we need leaders who are thinking outside the sector to help us reinvent.”
For Kering, which has seen shares fall 28 per cent in the past year due to a series of revenue declines at its biggest brand, Gucci, could thinking and hiring outside of the box be its saving grace?
“Kering is in a difficult situation at the moment, on top of the industry also being in a moment of uncertainty. Therefore, both in the industry and in Kering specifically, I think there is a certain consensus that there is a need to try something new,” says Fabrizio Ferraro, professor of the strategic management department and academic director of the Institute for Sustainability Leadership at IESE Business School. “Sometimes, it’s a good idea to explore outside the typical playbook.”
“It’s that literal outsider’s perspective of not being conditioned to some of the values and beliefs we have within the industry,” says Jamie Gill, founder of talent incubator The Outsiders Perspective, which helps people move into fashion from alternative industries.
Luxury fashion has a history of hiring from FMCG, in particular, which can be traced back to the period in which the industry was scaling and industrialising. “The industry was becoming much bigger and had to professionalise across all functions, moving beyond the traditional family-owned heritage brands to the megabrands of today,” says Ferraro. “Consumer goods has always been a good school for CEOs going into brands that are expecting to scale.”
Likewise, beauty executives are used to working in a more agile environment, and can bring speed and scale to a luxury fashion role. As luxury moves further into experiences, with brands opening hotels and restaurants, Ferraro expects to see some hires from the hospitality industry, too.
Industries outside of fashion, like FMCG, professional services, banking, accounting and law, typically have a stronger focus on profitability and professional rigour, says Gill. “In luxury, there’s more of a focus on brand longevity, brand codes, brand positioning — which are crucial to consumer sentiment,” he says. “With fashion, we always say we’re only as good as our last season, and we’ve had ongoing demand for apparel and luxury and cultural relevance for so long, whereas other industries have figured out what is underpinning a brand, like distribution and pricing, which can lead to more sustainable growth. They’ve also retained consumer loyalty where we’ve lost it.”
Many automotive executives have engineering backgrounds, which is why they’ve not been obvious targets for luxury fashion brands. But there are some parallels between the sectors: the automotive industry also experienced a slowdown in 2024 as it struggled with subdued economic conditions and changes in consumer preferences. The automotive industry also has a complex supply chain (Pinault highlighted de Meo’s understanding of the supply chain as a key reason for hiring him).
Still, De Meo’s appointment seems to be driven more by his specific skills as a leader, turnaround strategist and marketeer than his expertise in automotive. Experts point to de Meo’s penchant for building strong executive teams and energising them. “This is a CEO who has been able to — not once, but twice [at Renault and Seat] — relatively quickly take a company that was in trouble and re-energise it, bring it back to passion with a very deep understanding of brand and marketing,” says Ferraro. De Meo’s marketing expertise makes him a good fit to work with fashion creative teams, Ferraro adds.
Harvey believes that executives with a brand management or marketing background might replace the traditional merchant leader in fashion. “We need consumer-centric leaders. This moment [of downturn] won’t be solved by cautious operators,” she says. “I’m not saying operators aren’t needed, but it’s about how we think about operators: they should be empowering creativity, not squelching it.” In this sense, Harvey believes brands could benefit from giving business-minded creative directors a seat at the table, allowing them to shape the company’s strategy. “Creativity isn’t just for designers, all business leaders need to be thinking creatively.”
Gill highlights the need for diversity of skill, thought and lived experience. Particularly around ethnicity, nationality or gender, there are industries outside of luxury fashion that may be more diverse. “This shift to alternative industry leadership naturally lends itself to more diversity, rather than [luxury] leaders moving from seat to seat,” says Gill.
Challenges for an outsider
Acclimating to the luxury fashion industry can be a challenge. Many C-suite execs began on the shop floor and have worked in the industry their whole lives, and with that, have existing sector-specific relationships. “The most important challenge for someone coming from a different industry is to quickly learn about the specificities of luxury, as well as to separate the wheat from the chaff when recruiting for talent within the luxury goods space,” says Bernstein luxury goods analyst Luca Solca. “It would be easier for a veteran — like Joshua Schulman at Burberry, for example — to build a strong team, because he has a big network. This is more difficult for someone coming from a different background.”
Vogue Business unpacks the priorities for the luxury group’s new chief executive, Renault head Luca de Meo.
Ferraro suggests that it’s not always wise for a new CEO to bring in a whole new team in any case, but working with the existing leadership teams and knowing who to promote internally is another challenge. “The challenge will be to make sure the entire team of executives — both at corporate HQ level and at the different brands — are working together without resistance when exploring any new directions the company is going in,” he says. Luxury fashion specifically is particularly relationship based, experts flag.
There’s also the risk that an outsider’s perspective won’t be welcomed internally. “Sometimes, as an industry, we think we know best. There’s a belief that they [the outsider exec] have to know product the way we know product, they have to understand all our codes and how PR and brand works and how we have historically engaged with the customer — and how can anyone who hasn’t been bred in the industry possibly know all that?” says Gill. “An outsider isn’t coming in with a whole suite of their people to change everything, it’s really about enhancing what exists with a fresh perspective within this environment.”
As luxury fashion emerges from its difficult market conditions, experts say we may see further skilled executives being appointed from external industries. “We’re in a transition of industry skills — that’s really what innovation is about,” says Gill. “If you’re hiring an exec that’s got a really robust professional skillset, including turnaround and big business, how is that not going to be beneficial for fashion?”
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Luca de Meo to succeed François-Henri Pinault as Kering CEO
