The Verdict on Luxury Fashion’s Designer Reset

Sheena Butler-Young (0:08)

Hello, and welcome to The Debris from The Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BoF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm Senior Correspondent Sheena Butler-Young.

Luxury Fashion has been playing an extraordinary game of creative director musical chairs, with more than a dozen major fashion houses bringing in new creative directors.

A year or so into many of those resets, we're starting to get a clearer picture of what's working and who still has something to prove. The luxury market itself remains sluggish, but when it comes to the things designers can more directly influence, like product, image, and storytelling, there are signs of progress. Chanel is seeing an immediate response to Matthieu Blazy, Gucci appears to be finding its footing under Demna, while at Dior, Jonathan Anderson's world is coming into focus. Here to discuss is BoF's chief luxury correspondent, Robert Williams. Robert, welcome back to The Debrief.

Robert Williams (1:05)

Hi Sheena, thanks for having me.

Sheena Butler-Young (1:07)

So Robert, we are so lucky. We're catching you right at the end of Fashion Month. You've been on the ground in Milan and in Paris, and you've been seeing the latest collection of all these new creative directors that we spent the last year watching settle into these huge new jobs. Can you tell us what have you been watching this season?

Or watching four?

Robert Williams (1:26)

Yeah. So I have been on the ground in Milan and in Paris, and also working to develop some of our luxury coverage for New York and London, where we have had more than a dozen big brands change creative directors one year ago.

Now, for brands to keep up that energy, keep up excitement for media as well to keep people paying attention, it's a bit of a challenge now as we're going into this digesting phase. So we have our head critics, we have Tim Blanks, we have Angela Fleck-Avento covering the shows, and then I've been out looking at the collections, trying to sit across both the fashion and the business point of view, seeing which brands are managing to tell a compelling story that I think could connect with their audience, and also seeing which ones are making smart moves to turn that new energy into sales, and which ones maybe have some new exciting ideas that they haven't found a way to turn into sales yet. We're looking at all of that as we go around with Imran, and our editor-in-chief, and with Vikram Kansar, our editorial director, and with our critics, and so looking at the shows.

Sheena Butler-Young (2:41)

Well, I think you've been very clear on the fact that this stuff takes time, so there's a headline of this great creative reset, and then a lot of coverage in the last year that sought to answer the question of is it working, is it not working.

Based on what you're looking at, you're looking at both business, both creative trying to bridge those two worlds, and I guess answer that question to the extent that you could. Does the picture three or four seasons in for a lot of these creative directors feel clearer, and what is clearer now?

Robert Williams (3:12)

Whether or not these designer revamps can reignite excitement about the luxury industry, whether brands can get back on track, the ones who have seen sales slow down significantly over the past couple of years, whether they can get back on track after having a big design or change, either that they've initiated in the hopes that it would make things get better, or that they're dealing with because they had a huge talent that left. That is in some cases getting clearer, in some not, I have to say.

I think we saw a really strong focus on product across the fashion industry this season. There was a lot of compelling or at least commercially digestible product on the runway in a lot of instances. At the same time, it was not the most exciting season. So actually, if you had asked me, is the picture getting clearer a couple weeks ago, I might have said, yes, a lot of things are going in the right direction. This has been a slow, more muted season where I think we're realizing that a lot of this stuff is still up in the air, that a designer change can both save a brand or really enhance a brand. And it can also totally throw it off track.

Sheena Butler-Young (4:22)

I want to take some of these shows and designers one by one. I'm going to kind of deviate for a quick second because you said something that I've been thinking about a lot as we unveiled our BoF 500 It was Marc Jacobs in Conversation with Imran that mentioned this idea that all of this can't fall on the creative.