Designer Musical Chairs
A new creative director steps into a legacy house. The fashion industry buzzes with excitement. The debut arrives. Celebration, rejection, and think pieces follow. Sometimes the tenure is successful and lasts, sometimes it’s woefully short-lived (like poor Dario Vitale’s Versace).
We have seen this cycle play out with designers again and again. Demna went from Balenciaga to Gucci, Alessandro Michele from Gucci to Valentino, Jonathan Anderson put Loewe back on the map and then moved on to Dior. Each move is framed as momentum. But it’s getting old and in reality, it often feels more like rotation.
The industry still sells the idea that a single creative leader can revitalize a brand overnight. Sometimes they can. I’ll admit that I’m as excited about Matthieu Blazy's Chanel as everyone else. While there are exceptions, what is generally happening now is less about transformation and more about turnover. Designers arrive, dive into the archives, and then just put their spin on an already existing identity.
To be clear, a creative director should do this. They are taking over an established brand identity, after all. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we let those houses go (they’re all owned by the same people anyway) and let designers stand behind their own names.
What gets lost in all of this is the idea of building something from the ground up. Instead of investing in new voices with distinct points of view, the industry keeps circulating the same names through the same houses. It creates the illusion of change, but the foundation stays intact. The same codes, the same references, the same expectations. At a certain point, it starts to feel less like creative evolution and more like brand maintenance.
There is also a bigger identity question at play. When a house shifts direction every few years depending on who is in charge, what is the throughline? Is it the brand itself, or is it whoever is designing it at the moment? Because increasingly, it feels like the latter. And when the designer becomes the identity, the brand risks losing its own voice entirely.
