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Ludovic de Saint Sernin left Ann Demeulemeester after six months. Rhuigi Villaseñor left Bally after a year and a half. Serhat Işık and Benjamin A Huseby left Trussardi two years in. Charles de Vilmorin left Rochas after two years.
Longstanding labels are rethinking their design hires after turning to a cohort of emerging designers with strong personal followings in a bid to tap into a younger and, in some cases, more diverse community. A hasty creative director departure can happen for a variety of reasons, from internal disagreements and a mismatch of brand DNA to general corporate instability and a drop in sales — but is there something else underlying?
“We’ve gone through different periods where there’s been musical chairs of designers, but it’s hitting a high right now,” says luxury consultant Robert Burke. Rapidly changing trends and impatience play a role, Burke says. “The consumer is moving at such a fast pace because of social media and their immediate exposure, so they become really enamoured with different brands or designers for a short amount of time and then they move on. For brands, the minute they start to feel stagnation, they tend to make quick moves. When they need fresh direction or to appeal to a new or younger customer base, often bringing in a new creative director can really do that.”
Burke says the fact that brands are willing to part ways with a creative director after such a short tenure means that the brand either underestimated how complicated a rebranding would be or that the appointment was not a good fit to begin with.
“The disadvantages [of hiring a young designer at the centre of the zeitgeist] were that we’re making really big swings for a brand away from their heritage and moving into the context of streetwear, for instance, which for so many years has played such an important role in the zeitgeist,” says recruiter Karen Harvey, who is CEO and founder of executive search and consulting firm Karen Harvey Consulting Group.
Critics had doubts from the beginning about whether De Saint Sernin would be a good fit for Ann Demeulemeester given the very different sensibilities of both his designs and Instagram influencer community. While fashion insiders were excited by Villaseñor’s appointment at Bally, they noted that his LA streetwear roots were a jump for the 172-year-old Swiss leather goods brand. At Rochas, which is best known for perfume, rising star De Vilmorin’s maximalist designs didn’t help the brand reach its €20 million target — instead, sales slipped from €8 million to €5-6 million. While fashion fans and critics supported GmbH founders Işık and Huseby faithfully, Trussardi’s parent company QuattroR said the brand wasn’t hitting its targets to turn around its business.
The strategy to avoid high turnover is twofold: experts suggest that brands focus on designers that naturally fit their DNA and sensibility while also ensuring they provide sufficient time and support for the creative director to learn the ropes.
“Fashion is the only industry in the world where we’ll pluck very young people and put them into extremely accelerated positions,” says Benji Park, a Gen Z fashion commentator who is popular on TikTok. “You wouldn’t expect the founder of a plucky startup to be asked to be the CEO of Google. We expect a lot in fashion: we have this idea that if you’re creative and interesting enough, you can do it, but it’s a huge task.”
Brands are now looking internally to fill vacant roles. Less than two weeks after De Saint Sernin’s departure, Ann Demeulemeester announced its menswear designer, Stefano Gallici, would take over. Bally followed a similar direction, appointing Simone Bellotti, who had joined the brand in October, to design director in the wake of Villaseñor’s departure as creative director. It’s a strategy that fashion brands have seen success with in the past: when Daniel Lee left Bottega Veneta, his right-hand man, design director Mattieu Blazy, took over; Alessandro Michele was a relatively unknown name when he took over Gucci in 2015 following 13 years working in its design studio.
“Having already worked alongside the team during the past nine months, Bellotti has a robust understanding of Bally and a commitment to our core values,” a Bally representative told Vogue Business. The company did not comment further on the reason for Villaseñor’s departure beyond its initial statement.
“With his exceptional talent, deep understanding of the brand s DNA and previous experience as a valuable member of our design team, Stefano embodies the ideal fit for this position,” said Claudio Antonioli, who owns Ann Demeulemeester. “His promotion reflects our commitment to nurturing young talent and we are confident that his vision will bring a fresh and innovative outlook.” De Saint Sernin, Trussardi and Rochas declined to comment. De Vilmorin, Huseby, Işık and Villaseñor did not respond by the time of publication.
Consultant Burke says brands that are in need of a rebranding are more likely to seek a designer with an established community and presence. But, it’s a riskier strategy than promoting someone internally who already knows the company — a risk that is likely unnecessary if the brand is already performing well and doesn’t require a total overhaul.
A new trajectory for young creatives
It’s widely regarded in the business world that there are some CEOs who are great at launching startups and others that are better at scaling a business. To an extent, that’s true of designers, too. Whether a young creative is a better fit for launching their own label or joining an established brand will depend on a number of factors including culture, class, their feelings about authority, confidence, their personality type and interest in a personal branding, according to fashion writer and educator Dal Chodha, who teaches at Central Saint Martins. Central Saint Martins boasts a prestigious list of alumni including Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Phoebe Philo and Riccardo Tisci, and as such, Chodha says his students usually aspire to become a star rather than joining a luxury brand at a low level and working their way up.
Experts say brands should provide sufficient support behind the scenes to bridge the skills gap for a young designer with their own emerging label to transition to a role at a larger company. “They need someone who’s going to introduce them to the atelier properly, take them through the archive, they need to have a brand historian teach them and take them through it, they need to have proper bonding time with the atelier team so they can understand each other,” says fashion commentator Park. Brands should also consider offering pastoral care to support designers through this transition period, he says.
For brands, it also means understanding that a turnaround is unlikely to be a quick process. “Brands keep banking on cool — they want cool, they want Gen Z, streetstyle, culture — and then after two seasons when they’ve not tripled revenue they decide to go back. These brands need to give designers a chance to settle in,” says Park. He adds that a designer’s first few seasons are rarely outstanding, so it’s a shame to write them off so early.
Part of the problem is that a young creative director’s large Gen Z following may increase exposure, but often it’s an extra jump to allow that exposure to translate to sales. “Just because a designer has a lot of followers, doesn’t mean the people following you will invest in what you’re making,” says Chodha. “There’s a level of aspiration that we’ve forgotten about — you might be following someone because you aspire to that lifestyle, not necessarily because you’re part of it.”
In contrast to the slew of departures from a cohort of young, cool designers who are tapped into the zeitgeist, experts agree Maximilian Davis’s appointment at Ferragamo is an outlier. The key point of difference, they say, is that he has found a balance between maintaining the brand’s DNA in his collections while expanding the almost 100-year-old leather goods brand’s audience to include the likes of Kylie Jenner. In addition, experts note that CEO Marco Gobbetti has expressed an investment in Davis’s vision, which allows the commercial and creative to align.
Some of the other recent appointments include Harris Reed, whose first collection for Nina Ricci was met with some criticism, including that the pieces seemed cartoonish and of low quality. However, like Ferragamo, Park notes that Reed’s ability to create extravagant gowns is a good fit for Nina Ricci’s brand DNA. Experts and fashion critics are also eagerly anticipating Peter Do’s arrival at Helmut Lang; Chodha similarly notes the synergy between the two minimalist brands.
Time to look within?
The shift toward safer internal hires mirrors the shifts in fashion toward product over hype, says recruiter Harvey. “Brands are really interested in bringing those strong talents to focus on product, quality and heritage or brand DNA. [With that], they’re recognising that marketing might not come in the same way as fast. It’s not that those talents don’t have vision, but the vision would be more about shaping the totality of the brand versus making it about zeitgeist culture and getting to the product later. It’s more from inside out than from outside in.”
The support that an internal hire requires will differ from that which an external buzzier designer needs. “[Internal hires] are often employed because they know the archive, they know the brand. But, they need to be encouraged to find their own voice and figure out what they want to convey through their fashion,” says Chodha.
To avoid betting big on one person, brands might look to other creative structures such as a rotating designer model like AZ Factory, Moncler Genius and Jean Paul Gaultier couture, says consultant Burke.
Alternatively, brands could go for dual creative leadership: one brand leader or figurehead, and one design or product leader, suggests fashion commentator Park. Some big brands can rely solely on the design team for products, notes Harvey. “I think we’ve trended on this idea of bringing marketing to the centre of a creative director’s role, and in some cases the product and design has been done by the relative unknowns. Look at Louis Vuitton — they have an incredible studio, so they can bring in Pharrell Williams to do incredible things because they have that foundation,” she says.
The downside to internal hires is that they’re often from less diverse backgrounds. If brands want to discover the next Virgil Abloh, they’ll have to accept that it may take some time and investment, says Park. “If brands are going to seemingly bet on youth culture, queer culture, diverse cultures in any capacity, they need to be putting their money where their mouth is and letting these designers sink in for a few seasons.”
This article has been updated to include a statement from Claudio Antonioli about Ann Demeulemeester s promotion of Stefano Gallici (9 June 2023).
Correction: Serhat Işık and Benjamin A Huseby worked for Trussardi for two years, not three as previously reported (12 June 2023).
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