In 2004 Gucci was flying high. Tom Ford, its designer, and Domenico De Sole, its CEO, were on top of the world, having turned around a flailing brand in the mid-90s and making it one of the hottest tickets in the world of luxury fashion. The pair seemed untouchable; after fighting off a takeover attempt by Bernard Arnault, the founder of LVMH, and having found its perfect white knight in François-Henri Pinault, they formed a rival conglomerate. Who in their right mind would fire them? Pinault did, sending a very clear message across the industry that was in the throes of corporatization – no designer was as important as the brand, even the one who brought it back from the brink.
In the ensuing years designers would become guns for hire; they would be given gilded cages on one condition, a clear understanding that they were there to serve the brand and not the other way around. Those with big egos and erratic behaviors, like John Galliano, would be cut from brands without mercy. They were deemed liabilities and threats to brand equity, the thing that had to be protected at all costs. In order to underscore that it was the brand that mattered, the post of designer was renamed to “creative director,” which had a custodial ring. The message was, perform, and don’t get too comfortable, because you are an employee. And as corporate brands got richer and their marketing budgets ballooned, their executives, many of which came from such bastions of creativity as Unilever, assumed that marketing and merchandising was more important than design. Thus the primacy of the brand was established over the designer.
This also reflected on how creative directors were instructed to behave. Increasingly, candid interviews with the press became rarer and rarer and then all but disappeared. Brands looked for company men and women who understood the chain of command, often by hiring ex-assistants. No creative director was safe from the corporate mandate to grow at all costs. Phoebe Philo, the darling of the entire fashion industry, left Celine, despite turning it into a billion-plus brand, because, reportedly, she did not want to do menswear and perfume. Hedi Slimane did, and doubled the brand’s revenue, even though he radically changed its aesthetic. Haider Ackermann did magic at Berluti for two years before being let go despite critical acclaim. And fashion executives chose to bury mistakes that should have been a warning, like when Nicolas Ghesquiére was fired from the red-hot Balenciaga, to be replaced by the talentless but hyped Alexander Wang, who promptly tanked the brand.
As the luxury fashion market has grown, one would expect luxury conglomerates to launch new brands. But, perhaps driven by the failure of Arnault-backed Christian Lacroix, the industry instead deemed it easier to resuscitate old houses. After all, they still had brand equity, however damaged. And old houses did not come with the liability of attaching a new name of a designer who is still alive and might develop a loyal following. Storied brands became empty vehicles which could be filled with whatever content and meaning the management wanted, with house codes ignored.
The strategy of placing the brand front and center through relentless marketing and merchandising seems to have worked for two decades. But it feels like the pendulum is swinging back. Nowhere is this more emblematic than at Gucci, which in 2022 unceremoniously fired Alessandro Michele, its creative director whose baroque, theatrical vision of the brand increased its sales fivefold, from $2 billion to $10 billion, in mere ten years. The brand is now getting crushed, as is the rest of Kering, the conglomerate that owns it. No matter how much marketing money and PR pyrotechnics it has been throwing around, the verdict from the consumer is clear; the new, sedate version of Gucci is not wanted. Meanwhile at Burberry, Daniel Lee is also floundering, as did Tisci. When Tisci showed his first Burberry collection, it was a mess of gigantic proportions put together by merchandising and marketing committees. Tisci’s personal signature was nowhere to be seen. This torture went on until his last year at the brand; only in the last two collections his style resurfaced, a little too late. And it increasingly seems that Lee will fare no better.
Look around today and the luxury fashion landscape is littered with brand failures, from Matthew Williams’s streetweary Givenchy to Sean McGirr’s girly McQueen. It seems that all of a sudden it is not enough to put logos on merch, hire a bunch of celebrities to wear it, and market with gusto. Corporate hubris is being punished left and right, and the industry is learning that hype is not enough. Meanwhile, real designers, such as Sarah Burton and Haider Ackermann, are getting top jobs at Givenchy and Tom Ford. Rumor has it that J.W. Anderson will be given reigns at Dior. If so, the message is clear – creative directors that are capable of runway magic that they are able to turn into sellable luxury are important. Meanwhile, designers like Phoebe Philo are going on their own (even if partially backed by Arnault’s money). It turns out that selling fashion may not be the same as selling detergent, and that the intangibles of beauty and sensibility cannot be quantified. Perhaps there is still hope for a fashion designer after all.