The Verdict on Luxury Fashion’s Designer Reset

0:00Being a serious business owner takes hard work, patience, and a drive to keep moving forward. So it's important to find a serious business card that goes the extra mile. With the VentureX Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more. This is your sign to take your business to the next level. The Capital One VentureX Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. This episode is brought to you by Macy's. I've got to say, one of my favourite things about autumn is finally being able to properly dress again.

0:38And for me, that means layers. And especially a really good sweater. Cashmere is a classic for a reason. It's soft, lightweight, warm. And it's one of those pieces that you can bring out year after year. Macy's has a huge range of cashmere styles, designed in-house and made with two-ply yarn construction. So they're built to last without completely blowing your budget. And if you want something with a little more personality, statement sweaters are having a moment too, especially Fair Isle. I love the idea of pairing one with a baggy denim or a silk skirt, and then adding a leather jacket or trench as it gets a little chillier.

1:16So, if you're ready for sweater weather, Macy's has everything you need to make your autumn wardrobe feel cozy but still elevated.

1:33Hello and welcome to The Debrief 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.

1:49Luxury 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 seen in immediate response to Mathieu Blasie. Gucci appears to be finding its footing under Demna. While at Dior, Jonathan Anderson's world is coming into focus.

2:23Here to discuss is BOF's chief luxury correspondent, Robert Williams. Robert, welcome back to The Debrief. Hi, Sheena. Thanks for having me. 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 for? 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.

3:06And now for brands to kind of keep up that energy, keep up excitement, for media as well to keep people paying attention. You know, it's a bit of a challenge now as we're kind of going into this digesting phase. So, you know, we have our head critics, we have Tim Blanks, we have Angela Flaccovento covering the shows. And then, you know, I've been out looking at the collections, you know, kind of trying to sit across both the fashion and the business point of view, seeing, you know, which brands are managing to tell a compelling story that I think, you know, 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.

3:52We're kind of 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. So looking at the shows. well I mean I think you've been very um clear on the fact that this this stuff takes time so there's like a headline of like you know this great creative reset and then a lot of coverage in the last year that sought to answer the question of like is it working is it not working based on what you're looking at you're looking at both both business both creative trying to sort of bridge those two worlds and 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?

4:35And what is clearer now? Whether or not, you know, these designer revamps can reignite excitement about the luxury industry, whether brands can, you know, 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 designer change, either that they've initiated in the hopes that it would, you know, make things get better, or that they're dealing with because they had a huge talent that left. You know, that is in some cases getting clearer and some not, I have to say. I mean, I think we saw a really strong focus on product across the fashion industry this season.

5:14There was a lot of compelling or, you know, at least commercially digestible product on the runway in a lot of instances. At the same time, it was not like the most exciting season. So actually, you know, 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 kind of slow, more muted season where, you know, I think we're realizing that a lot of this is still up in the air, that a designer change can both save a brand or really enhance a brand. And it can also like totally throw it off track.

5:47I 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 like all of this can't fall on the creative. Right. Like and I think that's what your coverage and some of your storytelling in high margin is talked about. Like they can only it's a huge part of it, but they can only do so much. Very quickly, I have to ask your hot take on like, do you believe that? Do you think there's too much pressure or conversation around like, you know, you bring in a creative and it all changes.

6:21Is that sort of how you feel about it? I think that creative is a huge part of the puzzle here. It's not a part of the puzzle. It is the puzzle. These are brands that live and die by their product and by the stories they tell about the product. So the creative is essential, but the creative needs to be accompanied by savvy, smart moves at every level of the organization, especially when you're talking about these very big brands. And often brands now have been looking for creative solutions to business problems. They also look for business problems to creative solutions sometimes. So every case is different.

7:02But yes, we're going through a moment where brand fatigue is a huge issue, where overpricing is a huge issue, and where the question isn't about, you know, are these brands saying something interesting or are they selling something that's desirable? it's often about are they saying something that's interesting enough or desirable enough to sustain a huge global scale that fashion due to its cyclical nature has not always been really set up to sustain. So that is where Mark is really absolutely right and where anytime we write about can designer revamp save fashion, the answer is always going to be no because they can't save fashion alone.

7:44Okay, I just had to ask you that. Thank you for indulging me. Of course. I want to talk about the big brands, like the biggest ones first. So Chanel, Gucci, and Dior. You've written that those creative bets are, they're among the ones that are big payoff, although at very different speeds and in different ways. So Chanel first. You've described Chanel as the designer revamp that worked. I don't think it's hyperbolic, but there's some nuance there and some layers there. What do you think Chanel's gotten right? And what do you mean by it's worked? Well, I think that what Chanel has done has just been remarkably effective at addressing the challenge that they faced.

8:19I think they were very smart about looking very carefully at what it was that was not going well and coming up with a plan and giving time to implement the plan and kind of having a 360 approach. So, you know, we called it the designer revamp that worked, which was a bit incendiary because a lot of these designer revamps are working in different ways and on certain levels. But Chanel's is certainly the one that has been the standout in the sense that it's got almost immediate proof of concept. Sales are reportedly up like 16 % in the first half of the year. So that's quite significant in a market that's more or less flat.

8:57What they've done is really refresh their fashion silhouette with a new sort of wardrobe that Matt Jure Blasie has come up with that is very easy to understand, to digest. It's very visually him. It's very Chanel. It's more youthful than what they were doing before. or it's more about style and pieces that are kind of a bit easier that you could wear in a lot of different contexts. It's not so ladylike, so institutional or official. You know, I think the CEO for the fashion division, Bruno Pavlovsky, said to me, like, Chanel ne peut pas être que statuitaire. He said to me, like, Chanel shouldn't only be about status symbols.

9:41And I think Blasie has been very smart about addressing the way Chanel could fit into its customers' lives in a way that really brought in a lot of new customers. And then this very easy silhouette has been paired with this very expressive interpretation of craft and how different craft techniques can be used in a way that show up. You can understand them. You can touch them. You can feel the work that's gone into the piece. and you're not just having to trust the salesperson that this is the finest cashmere from Scotland, you can often feel how the craft has influenced the visual impact you're getting from the piece.

10:20And so people feel like they're getting their money's worth there in a way they didn't necessarily a year or two ago. Is there something, and I think this question might be probably hugely reductionist, or asking you to really use a broad brush or broad strokes here, but we're not declaring victory too early. I don't think that's the case. But is there something that Chanel can do wrong and disturb the momentum that comes to mind? Or another way to ask it is, you know, how do they keep this going? If there was just one thing that you that comes to mind for you? You know, I think that Matriblazie has come up with a reliable formula for an effective Chanel collection that then raises the risk of could it become too formulaic?

11:02They show very often they need to have a formula when they're going to show this many collections a year and then it's going to be disseminated to this many boutiques. The scale at which this company operates is such that there needs to be some kind of a formula. At the same time, they really need to always make sure they're investing in having new ideas, new shapes, silhouettes, making sure that they can be insisting on celebrating this is what Chanel is now. and also evolving it, pushing it forward. I think we saw them do a pretty good job of that on the runway on Monday night with the spring-summer 2027 show.

11:41You know, it didn't make a clear, you know, emotional statement in the way that, like, their show in the New York City subway did and sort of telling this very clear, optimistic story about Chanel. I think the narrative was a bit less impactful in a lot of ways. Some of the images might not be as memorable, But the garments themselves had a bit more complexity. There were some new shapes, new tailoring techniques. There was a lot going on in terms of the product that made me feel optimistic, you know, that they're really thinking very smartly about how to push things forward a little bit each time.

12:16So I want to talk about Gucci next. It's a bit more of a complicated story over there. Sales were down as of the most recent quarter, I believe, down about 2%. You said in your reporting, though, that Demna's latest show felt like a breakthrough for the brand. I like the way you said this, that his take on the brand felt inevitable, like meaning it could either be seen as the correct answer to the brand's current challenges or simply the obvious one. What does that mean? What did I mean by that? So breakthrough, you know, originally it was Tim Blanks who used that word first because he kind of felt like as if like he, Devna, had been doing like Gucci therapy, like, you know, moving to Milan and talking to this whole company, interrogating the market, interrogating the archive, interrogating the brand about saying like, who are you?

13:04Who do you want to be? What's working? What's not? You know, and doing this sort of fashion therapy and that then, you know, it felt like a breakthrough. And commercially, I had to agree with what Tim was saying because the Alessandro Michele era put forward so many parts of Gucci's archive, so many use cases from, you know, sneakers to little keychains to, you know, Demi Couture. They put forth so many different faces of this brand and pushed them very hard all at once. They kind of threw the kitchen sink at it. That was Alessandro's maximalist vision. That was that moment. And so following that up has always been a huge challenge because it wasn't like there was some obvious unexploited face to Gucci that you could bring to light.

13:50What Demna has done is rather than trying to pick one thing, he's kind of figured out how it works on different levels over the past year. You know, he had this fashion film about how, you know, you could come up with all these different characters using the archive, how you could be this or that sort of panoply of funny people, like personalities through Gucci. Then he had this February runway debut that was like this very clear fashion statement. And I have to say, a lot of people didn't get, you know, it felt a bit skanky. It felt quite, you know, full on in terms of like taking, you know, this sort of Miami Vice vision of fashion.

14:30And it was really challenging notions of good taste. And it had maybe some layers of irony that I don't, I'm not sure that most of Gucci's audience was ready to unpick. But then, you know, he didn't just stop there and keep doing shows like that. He then took it in a different way with this huge Times Square spectacle kind of showing this is the way Gucci could create this big moment with Paris Hilton and Tom Brady. But so why September felt like a breakthrough was that, you know, he was able to bring what he's really good at, which is documenting the way people dress in real life and how real people try to idealize themselves and, you know, be a bit more glamorous, a bit bolder, a bit cooler through style.

15:12the way he always documented that and brought it to the runway at Balenciaga, it was such a Parisian vision. It was something that was so specifically him that how he could transfer that to an Italian house wasn't clear. But with his show set in the store, he showed all these different ways that a person could style Gucci. And he had this clear, clear vision of kind of what Gucci can be for in people's lives. And he said, you know, it is for the aristocracy or even just for the bourgeoisie that want to be a bit more glamorous, that want to step a little bit outside the lines. People that just want to be a little bit more bold than what the situation necessarily calls for.

15:52Like, you know, Gucci is for bringing a bit of extra glamour, a bit of extra sex to people's lives. And so he just kind of showed all these people and showed all the ways you could put it together. And I think it was very impactful. Why I said it felt like almost inevitable and correct, but also a bit obvious would be that, you know, a lot of people in the fashion industry right now are thinking about how they can get in on what Chanel is doing very well. And I think collapsing that distance between the runway and real life and showing people in a really clear way, this is how you can style this product is certainly one of the big values underpinning Chanel's success right now.

16:32I think Dimna managed to do that in a Gucci way. Maybe the era where you can do a very sharp fashion show and then expect people to interpret it and put their spin on it themselves. Maybe it's not completely over, but the era where a branded Gucci scale could do that every season is probably over. So, you know, making this kind of statement where you show this is what Gucci can be for you, but you still make it fashion. I mean, I think that's pretty exciting. I love that you ended that by saying it's very exciting because you also said there hasn't necessarily been much you wanted to buy. And is that because you're just not a Gucci person?

17:10Or is it that it's not crossing that threshold from exciting, amazing, great vision, all the things, but I'm not pulling out my wallet? Do you think other people feel that way? Or is that a Robert thing? Um, probably a little bit of both. Maybe when Gucci from a fashion standpoint was lying more dormant, I was able to go pick out some, some hidden treasures among the staples among the things they always sell and feel like it was a, like a more apt moment to put my own spin on that. But no, I think it was just generally, I'm not sure that the product has caught up with the vision. I think he's figured out what this brand could stand for.

17:50And then now the work of making sure of building out an interesting collection, interesting bags, interesting shoes that reflect that that also feel like they're good quality for the price. You know, it's still a work in progress. They've lowered a lot of their prices, which makes it a little bit easier to hit that bar. But I don't know that that's where you want to necessarily be adjusting. You know, the brand is making a big moment, making a splash. You know, it's smart to adjust where you have to, but you wouldn't hope that people are buying it just because it's on sale. I think they just, the collection still has a little bit of a ways to go.

18:27At least it did with that first one in February. This one felt a little bit more complete, but like an example would have been maybe the bags. They put a lot of emphasis on this big flap bag that felt like it was, you know, their take on that big maxi flap shape that's working a lot for a lot of brands, notably Chanel and Mature Blasie. It felt like a quite obvious Gucci spin on that, which makes sense for them to have in their collection maybe. But I would have liked to see them do something that was more declarative, making a stronger statement that was more proprietary for them. We'll be back with more of The Debrief right after this.

19:16Being a serious business owner takes hard work, patience, and a drive to keep moving forward. So it's important to find a serious business card that goes the extra mile. With the VentureX business card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more. This is your sign to take your business to the next level. The Capital One VentureX business card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details.

19:49So then there's Dior. You described Jonathan Anderson's, you know, the task in front of him was always going to be a challenge. There has been maybe a little bit of sales improvement over there, but not an outright hit. What's your take? What's what is going well or not so well this season? You know, I think what Jonathan managed to do very quickly when he arrived at Dior was a lot of the kind of cheesy and fusty parts of the brand image, maybe some of that grandiosity and like the all caps, the grand romance. You know, I think he managed to tone that down, refresh it very quickly. He's such a good art director and image director and creative director.

20:30When he's working now on the campaigns with his stylist, Bruno, and with David Sims, they really have managed to refresh the image very quickly. But Dior is not just a brand that sells its image and images. It also is a brand that's very rooted in silhouette. And I think these very experimental, asymmetrical, high-low, ruffled. There's been a lot of looks on the runway that felt overcomplicated, I think. I don't think it was very easy for a lot of people to project themselves in it. Certainly not as easy as Chanel, and that has been their bet. They were maybe betting that people are going to quite quickly want something that's more directional, more standout pieces that feel a little bit more challenging.

21:18I've heard that the ready-to-wear for women has rather taken off in recent months for a lot of the stockists, for a lot of the department stores. I've heard that the bags are starting to take off too. The menswear, which is a very Americana sort of preppy style proposition for the moment, I think getting the value proposition right there is a bit trickier. Overall, it's really not an easy brief. Dior is a brand that felt quite overexposed in recent years. And I think they were at a risk of going through a cycle a bit like what Gucci has gone through after Alessandro Michele. They had grown so quickly with Maria Grazia Curie.

21:57Jonathan's vision, it has this mix of concept and then clothes in a way that maybe is not as crystal clear as when he was at Loewe and he could really just do concepts on the runway because the house mainly needed to just sell bags. You know, at Dior, he's trying to negotiate that tension. I thought this season was quite coherent, quite compelling. It all felt a little bit more pared back, easier, more digestible. And by repeating a lot of the ideas he had introduced in both the men's wear and the women's wear over the past year, you could see how it could come together and it was starting to be a universe and it was starting to be his Dior, you know, maybe the randomness of some of those experiments kind of fades away once you repeat them.

22:43I felt that way. I also thought it was very pretty. A lot of people did not. A lot of my friends felt like there was not nearly as much to shoot. And from an editorial perspective, they weren't, you know, excited by it the way they normally are by a Jonathan show, but they didn't neither think it was just like clothes you could wear. So I think he's still in a sort of in-between place that's a little bit tricky to navigate. But, you know, it felt more cohesive to me and it felt refreshingly just pretty. I wouldn't want to see him do only that, but I thought it was quite valuable for the brand to do this exercise.

23:20We'll wait and see for a little bit. But it sounds promising. If I had to put a verdict there, that sounds promising. But jury's still maybe a little out. I want to switch gears to a couple other brands that we've been watching or we've been watching. So the new creative directors at Celine and Lueve, they faced a different kind of challenge following ultra respected designers whose visions had become somewhat synonymous with those brands. But both of those transitions seem to be going better than some had expected. So let's take them one by one, however you want to take them, Robert. What's the update?

23:51What do you think is working well for Celine and then for Lueve? As you said, these are brands where the brand was quite strong and in a good place. They had, you know, a very big, hot creative director in place, the kind of person that is not going to be easy to follow in their footsteps. But I think the brands have done a really good job at both of these houses at understanding why they were so strong and sticking with that. But rather than just slotting someone new in to do the same thing, they also managed to add something new. So like at Celine, Michael Ryder has been following up Eddie Sliman, who is known for this flawless, ultra precise fashion image making and styling.

24:36He has a very specific silhouette, very specific approach to fashion and branding and merchandising. Michael Ryder has come in. I think they understood that the brand should continue to be very French, very Parisian, and very focused on style. But rather than competing with that sort of like flawless precision that Eddie Sliman was doing, I think he's kind of opened it up. It's a bit looser. There's a bit more variety, a bit more of a spirit of play. It feels more Gen Z friendly, but also more mature women that I know are also responding to it as well. He's brought something looser, more playful, a bit more of a focus on design as well once you look at the pieces up close.

25:22I think versus just, you know, curation and kind of delving. He also kind of took away the really strong whiffs of like vintage from it. I think he's doing a great job. At the Wave A, we're following up our friend Jonathan Anderson. What do you think is coming together over there? I think you talked about craft and cultural creation and fun. Any additional thoughts on that? So at Loewe, we have Jonathan Anderson, who's left to go to Dior within the same group at LVMH. And so they've brought in Jack McAuliffe and Lazaro Hernandez, which many of your listeners will know, of course, because for those based in the U.S., Proenza Schooler, a great New York brand.

26:06They were the ones that came up with that and were leading it for quite a long time before they came to Loewe. Loewe had grown so rapidly in both its profile and its business, you know, with this mix that Jonathan had come up with that was all about craft, about cultural curation. It was quite intellectual and it was at the same time very fun. I feel like they've managed to keep those brand pillars going, but rather than the focus being so much about innovation and intellect, they've kind of moved it to the body, to the senses. You have these really hot colors, There's hot, ultra-sensorial fashion images where you have kind of water and ice and sunshine.

26:45And it also just, there's also really focused on making sure they have great products still. You know, they revived their most iconic product, the Amazona bag, which is kind of like, can be like a canvas for their amazing leather work and the amazing work they do with the colors of leather in terms of the tanneries that they work with. So it's this very, you know, a very square bag that kind of just shows that in a really nice way. And this last collection, you know, it didn't feel quite as conceptual as punchy visually in a lot of ways as we've come to expect from a Loewe show. But you did get the sense that like there would be so many different products to buy from this brand at so many price points.

27:23They had, you know, really put thought into the shoes, the jackets, the glasses, you know, all kinds of pieces. They really set themselves up to keep the momentum going at this brand. So Celine and Luayve did not throw the baby out with the bathwater. You also published a profile this week with Sarah Burton over at Givenchy. It seems like she had a different challenge, Robert. Tell us more. Yeah. So, I mean, that is so different from following up, you know, a star creative director that's been making the brand explode. At Givenchy, she was the fourth creative director to be named there in around a decade.

28:01You know, following up these glory days of Ricardo Tichy, and then this much more classic Parisian wardrobe vision, more elegant under Claire Wade Keller. And then the brand had kind of ping ponged back to something more hard edged pop industrial, a bit more streetwear influenced with Matthew Williams. So all of this change has created a lot of confusion there. And then she herself also, she had been the number two and right hand of Alexander McQueen for almost all of her career and then took over the brand after Lee McQueen passed away in 2010. So McQueen had been the designer of Givenchy as well from 97 to 2001.

28:44So she's following up all of these different creative voices who have all added their layer of images and, you know, to the brand awareness there. But I think she was very smart about just wiping the slate clean and just saying that, you know, Givenchy can be kind of a blank slate. For me, you know, it's about a very precise, clean silhouette. It's about women's bodies. It's about having a dialogue with women about how they want to feel in clothes. So, I mean, I think she's done a great job about, you know, initiating a new cycle there over the past, you know, year and a half, two years based on what she's good at, which is the silhouette.

29:23I want to talk also about maybe more changes afoot. I mean, I don't know if we can we can stand anymore, but there are some some rumors and I hate to use the word rumors, but reports. Let's call them reports about maybe some more creative resets to come. I'll let you, Robert, you tell us a little bit about like one of the big ones is Balenciaga. Probably too soon. I don't know. What do you think? And what is the report, Robert? I mean, pretty much everyone is now expecting after multiple reports, you know, that Balenciaga could part ways with Pierpaolo Piccioli within the next few days or weeks, you know, just a year after his first show for the brand.

30:01And I think that is, a lot of people would say that's too soon to change course. At the same time, I think this was a bit of a misfire strategically. You know, the strongest brands we've talked about, the ones where the designer resets are going the best, you know, they chose what, which elements of the brand they needed to keep going, like the values, the benefit, why people shop there, and then found a way to, you know, shake up the rest or add something to that. I think at Balenciaga, they got that puzzle kind of backward. They've continued to make sort of demi-couture sculptural ready-to-wear pieces and streetwear and athletic wear and sneakers.

30:46They've continued to sell all of this like hodgepodge and variety of products that they had been known for with Demna, but with a totally different message. Pierre Palapicioli has this message that's about humanism, about the value of people and, you know, really glorifying the individual person, trying to make sure that all the clothes are photographed in a way that's much more embodied. It's certainly much less tribal than what the brand had been doing before. And so, yeah, I think they kept a lot of the merchandising plan, but they changed the message. And maybe that's the opposite way around because all of that merchandise didn't really have much appeal once it wasn't reflecting that authorial vision, those values that Demna had been espousing, which was this sort of radical coolness, this very cynical awareness of the state of the world and being willing to poke fun at it.

31:45I think people really liked that Demna's Balenciaga, it was such a strong silhouette. It was like one piece makes the outfit. But Pierpaolo's touch is more classic, more elegant, and it didn't have that same, it didn't connect in the same way. And kind of fusing them visually, you know, keeping a lot of the visual codes of the old Balenciaga with Pierpaolo's vision, it's felt like pineapple pizza. Well, I was going to ask, like, is a change like that, is it confusing to do too soon? But it sounds like it's a hiring challenge that I think every board or C-suite thinks about when they think they've made the wrong move.

32:26It's like, do you split the difference? Do you just end it quickly and move on? Or do you try to see if you can stay the course? It sounds like the former might be making more sense. I think that the chance that this was going to congeal and that this was going to take off in a time frame that would make sense for a company like this was not great. The outlook was not looking good. So I think they're quite likely to pull the plug quite soon. That said, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy to get back on track. You know, so that always the question of was it too soon to change course is going to linger because, you know, you can't just go back.

33:08You know, I think Balenciaga could become like Givenchy a bit where, you know, it's gone from one thing to another thing to another thing is the risk that they're facing. So I think we're going to have to see what happens there. It's become a really challenging dossier for caring. To their credit, it had been slowing down. What Demna was doing there did need to be shaken up in some ways. It needed to be refreshed as much as a visionary as he is. But I just think they didn't find the right plan. And they didn't commit to it all the way either. I'm not sure what the demand would have been for completely Pier Paolo, Picioli, Blenciaga.

33:45But I think that might have been more interesting to see in many ways than this sort of transitional measure that kind of didn't make any of what they were doing look terribly good. so i want to complete our creative director luxury fashion month what like car wash we call a car wash i don't know robert but i want to i want to keep the rundown the rundown so other the full list um other changes at caring saint laurent anthony vaccarello is also said to be on the way out he's been in place for a decade so like we have almost the opposite of like get it done quickly the writing's on the wall versus someone that's been in place for a decade also major moments at this year's Met, all of that.

34:28It feels like a risky moment. Where does Saint Laurent go from here? I think this is going to be one of the most interesting stories to watch in fashion. You know, a new designer at a brand, it's not always the most interesting topic. As much as we, you know, that sort of football mercado situation is people like to follow it. They like to see how everyone did the different combinations of brands and designers. But ultimately, as I've said before, like, you know, a designer can't change everything. They can't always turn everything around. Some combinations are much fundamentally less interesting than others.

35:04You know, at Saint Laurent, it's going to be a really interesting moment for them. And how they navigate this is, it's quite delicate because this is a brand that has been a very important profit center for caring. It grew very consistently for a long time. And even as it slowed down, it has remained very profitable and very highly respected. And Vaccarello had this ultra clear, laser focused vision he developed over the years of what Saint Laurent was, what his Saint Laurent was. And, you know, he just would dig in over and over again at these iconic moments of the image making and the best designs and moments from Saint Laurent's history, especially in the late 70s and 80s.

35:44And then he would strip away everything that felt fusty and kitschy and just come up with this way to make that new that was really crystal clear. it felt like the brand for people who still dress up, the brand for people who still love fashion. You know, he was just running in the opposite direction of this industry where the distance between the runway and real life was always collapsing and where people were just trying to wear. There's so much merch and streetwear and sneakers. He never put a bag on the runway. I don't think he ever put a sneaker on the runway to my recollection, maybe in one of the menswear shows, he's a purist.

36:20And he put these girls in this crystal clear, readable silhouette, you know, on the runway, season after season. And he found ways to make it interesting because Saint Laurent is fundamentally interesting. It's an amazing archive. And so I think the opportunity for them is going to be about looking at all the different things Saint Laurent could be. You know, it was the designer that was one of the forefathers of ready to wear and the idea that fashion should collide with everyday life. He was the first one to do tuxedos for women, pants on the runway for women, the sense of everyday life and casualness and being liberated and feeling free and really talking about the way people move through the world in ways that were very varied and not just about the way people move through the world when they get dressed up to go out at night so there's there's a ton of opportunities there the the challenge will just be you know will those be as compelling how do you make that come this um more varied image maybe more of a lifestyle sort of image how do you make that come across and still resonate at this brand that's become famous for kind of doing the opposite for being the purist for being the one that does like pure sharp glamour evening fashion on the runway season after season dressed up you know it has such a crystal clear brand identity uh how to build on that without upsetting the apple cart is going to be you know it's going to be really risky but also hugely interesting to watch how to build on that without upsetting the apple cart i'm writing that down.

38:00Robert, thank you for this rundown. So brilliant, as always. Love to have you on The Debrief. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Please be sure to check out more of Robert's luxury coverage at businessoffashion.com. These and other stories are available to BOF professional subscribers only, and you can find the links in the episode notes. You've been listening to The Debrief, produced and edited by Olivia Davies and Angel Nemov. I'm Sheena Butler-Young. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Thanks so much for joining us and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

38:51Being a serious business owner takes hard work, patience, and a drive to keep moving forward. So it's important to find a serious business card that goes the extra mile. With the VentureX business card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more. This is your sign to take your business to the next level. The Capital One VentureX business card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details.