ROUND ROBIN

Clockwise from top left: After three years at Christian Dior, Raf Simons is now at New York label Calvin Klein Collection; Tomas Maier takes his final bow as creative director of Bottega Veneta during his fall/winter 2018 show alongside model Gigi Hadid; Louis Vuitton’s new artistic director, Virgil Abloh (centre) with LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault Michael Burke (right); after her stint at Chloé, Claire Waight Keller joined the house of Givenchy

Philo’s minimalist look. In other words, whether they should jump ship or not. What comes as more of a surprise is that Slimane will also add menswear, couture and fragrance to the roster at Céline, which is a smart move, considering many stylesavvy men around the world have turned to the French label for Philo’s precision-cut tailoring and expertly crafted coats.

This is why picking a new creative director is a major risk for brands; by shifting the aesthetic on a regular basis, they risk alienating their core customers and losing what makes them unique. Also, it isn’t cheap. Creative directors, who are often paid millions of dollars a year, rarely arrive alone. Companies must face the logistical and financial challenges of accommodating not only their new director, but also his or her team.

When Slimane joined Saint Laurent in 2012, the brand set up a design studio with a team of 15 in Los Angeles, where the designer lives—not an easy commute from the Paris headquarters. Similarly, Paris-based Céline created a new studio in London for Philo when she joined the house in 2008; she had refused to move, citing the needs of her gallerist husband and their children. This required scores of employees to live on aeroplanes or the Eurostar shuttling between London, Paris and Florence, where the company’s leather goods operation is located. Gucci, meanwhile, spent an estimated US$800 million revamping all its stores globally to accommodate Michele’s new vision, a major gamble that paid off.

Lucrative contracts aside, this constant state of flux makes it more difficult for designers to concentrate on their work. Creative directors have often accused conglomerates of not giving them enough time to settle into their new roles and find a rhythm. The founding designers of most modern houses, from Marc Jacobs to Gianni Versace, spent years at their eponymous labels honing their style. By contrast, this September we will be seeing the debut fall/winter collections of Hedi Slimane at Céline and Riccardo Tisci at Burberry, having seen the debut collections of Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Kim Jones at Dior Homme during the Paris men’s shows in June.

Some studies have suggested a shifting sands approach to creative directorship has a particularly negative impact on female designers, as women who want to slow down for a couple of years to have children are unable to afford that luxury. Fashion remains an industry dominated by women at every level bar one—the very top. Of the 92 shows on the Paris Fashion Week womenswear schedule, fewer than 35 have female creative directors, and Milan scores even lower.

Former male creative directors such as Alber Elbaz and Raf Simons have lamented the fact that the job stopped them from leading normal lives, but while women continue to shoulder the weight of childcare, a successful career in fashion is becoming increasingly difficult to balance with a family, especially since most creative directors are appointed between the ages of 35 and 45. When Philo had her third child in 2012, she had been at Céline for five years and spoke about how much easier it was to take maternity leave with a strong team in place with whom she had already worked on multiple collections.

But ultimately, the most important question remains: will longstanding clients of brands stay loyal if collections under a new designer are a major departure from what came before? Figures show that success stories such as Gucci’s not only attract new customers, they also keep existing ones. However, over time, the brands with a longstanding relationship with one designer tend to have fewer column inches dedicated to them but more long-term commercial success.

For now, we’ll just have to stay tuned to see if the game of musical chairs is a fad, or if it has the disruptive power to influence the entire fashion industry, for good or bad.