Fashion gets comfortable with women in boardrooms

Luxury labels take a proactive approach in creating a gender balance

Progress

they do, but haven’t fully comprehended the unglamorous sides of luxury, like supply chains, balance sheets and operational management. I’ve had to work hard to attract women from more conventional MBA tracks who felt that was the only way to get to the top. Now, I think, in the next few years, we will see more and more of them emerge for CEOs - if that’s what they want.”

Amid lingering sexism and the struggles of many women with families to find a work-life balance, another considerable challenge is how to offer a springboard to the women in middle and senior management roles who decide life as No. 1 is simply not for them.

Isabelle Guichot, the Balenciaga chief executive, believes that taking that last leap remains a personal choice, often dependent on external personal circumstances that go beyond flexible work arrangements or maternity leave.

“I would never have got to where I was today without the support of my partner, if I’d had to make choices that were too painful,” she said. “I was lucky.”

“It is tough, but you can have the personality, managing skills, intelligence and drive, but sometimes it is not quite enough if the timing is not quite right. Sometimes you simply cannot take a new job, move to a new country, change a company and mother two children. You have to be realistic.”

The road to an equal ratio of male to female chief executives among luxury brands is still long and littered with institutional barriers. Barbizet of Kering acknowledged: “There is still progress to be made to ensure that women are given access to the positions they deserve.”

Still, some of those who have made it to the 21st-century C-suite appear sure that a colleague’s gender will not matter to those who will, in time, follow them through the door.

“I think in luxury fashion there was a time when women were perhaps more associated with creative and marketing roles, but I think that is very much historic now,” said Crook, who was appointed chief executive of the star British brand Christopher Kane after working as a vice-president at Stella McCartney.

“It is no secret that women are typically strong multitaskers, and as the industry today demands higher standards and greater pressures across multiple areas, we have the propensity to make good leaders and stronger emotional connection with our teams,” she continued.

“It’s easy to make gender stereotypes, but at the end of the day it is about having the right skill set to fulfill multiple functions, regardless of gender. That should always be the deciding factor appointing senior management.” some had no women at all. Notably, four companies had 40 per cent or more female directors: Hermes, based in Paris, and three in the US: Michael Kors, Estee Lauder and Kate Spade, all with headquarters in New York.

“The question for brands now,” de Saint-Pierre said, “is how they can op- timize growth strategies and minimize risks when the diversity of the board itself neither reflects its audience or consumers.”

LVMH, the world’s largest luxury conglom- erate, with a portfolio of more than 70 brands, appears to be focused on taking a bottom-up approach. Fourteen per cent of its chief ex- ecutives are women, as are four of its 17 board members, although women make up 74 per cent of its workforce worldwide and 73 per cent of its annual graduate intake.

“We need to fuel the future of our brands and, in order to do that, we need to fuel the success of our women,” said Chantal Gaemperle, executive vice-president for human resources and synergies at LVMH. “We can do better in terms of getting them into top jobs, but we’ve made a lot of progress already, much of which is to do with our goal of nurturing females, encouraging their ambitions and facilitating their career paths across both product sectors and brands in order to train them, retain them and eventually get them into CEO roles further down the line.”

Conscious that women were entering the industry at its lowest levels but not proportionally rising to the top, LVMH created a major internal effort in 2009 by the name of “EllesVMH” - using the French word to indicate a feminine group. The initiative, now operating worldwide, was designed to encourage skills development and networkbuilding among female employees.

“One of my great passions is seeing these young women come up through our company pipeline and helping them to navigate and manage their professional paths within a strong community,” said Pamela Baxter, chief executive in North America for LVMH perfumes and cosmetics, as well as president of Christian Dior Couture.

“I was lucky enough never to encounter a glass ceiling in my career, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. A sense of transparency is essential if we are to build up female self-confidence and greater understanding of the balancing acts necessary to be a corporate executive who is No. 1 in their game.”

A continuing question, of course, is whether there is anything wrong with women’s consciously choosing to be No. 2. Simon Nyeck, a professor at Essec Business School in France and the academic director of its MBA programme in international luxury brands management, noted that while about 80 per cent of his incoming students were women, and many had gone on to senior management roles, “proportionally this is still a business run by men”.

“Historically, most women we’ve taken on the course have wanted to focus on branding and marketing. “They are brilliant at what

One of my great passions is seeing these young women come up through our company pipeline and helping them to navigate and manage their professional paths within a strong community Pamela Baxter | Chief executive LVMH