The risks of a market strategy modelled on a rollercoaster

On a Friday in late September, just a few days before Anthony Vaccarello was due to present – beneath the combined glow of the Eiffel Tower and immense chandeliers, in homage to the founder’s famous shows at the InterContinental Hotel – a fashion show that will go down in history as the ‘golden collection’ and which will, most likely and inexplicably, be the last of his ten years as creative director – the announcement is expected any hour now and anger is mounting on social media because even the most casual influencer knows that the problem there lies with pricing strategy and sales targets, not the desirability of the garments – we met Mytheresa’s CEO, Michael Kliger, at the entrance to Milan’s PAC, where Tod’s was about to hold its fashion show.

After the pleasantries and the “good to see you” – which in the fashion world is bandied about with the same generosity and the same insignificance as the adjectives “amazing” and “iconic” – we asked him the question that any observer is bound to ask at this point, namely how he interprets the difficult times the sector is currently facing. Kliger, who heads the world’s most powerful e-commerce group, replied that he had nothing to complain about, that the US market is growing by 35 per cent and that, as long as interest rates remain as high as they are now, there should be no downturns (thanks, Trump), and that, all things considered, Europe is holding up well too.

In the fashion world, he added, the problem lies rather in the constant changes in creative direction – which are sometimes nothing more than a reshuffle of positions – and the fact that all this coming and going of creatives, each with their own vision of fashion, from one brand to another – which is, of course, both right and inevitable – ends up confusing the end customer. A rather well-known Substack account has just published a surreal ‘guide to the latest creative changes’ so that no one gets confused; when you’re out and about, your friend asks, ‘So who’s in charge at X now?’, just like in fantasy football.

“Today we need stability, continuity and certainty,” observes Kliger.

However, the latest reports indicate that Vaccarello is indeed stepping down—a gentle and unassuming man who, over the course of ten years, has tripled the fashion house’s sales, even securing it a prestigious role among major film producers (some titles: “Emilia Pérez”, “Father Mother Sister Brother”, “Parthenope”).

Pierpaolo Piccioli’s future is in doubt. He was brought in by Balenciaga just over a year ago to restore the brand to its original status within the couture sphere following Demna’s long period of quasi-streetwear, but instead – following Francesca Bellettini’s move from Gucci – has found himself designing a sort of casualwear that is yet to be seen and doesn’t even find a place in the shop – just try popping into the boutique on Via Montenapoleone – whilst surrounded by a creative team of youngsters who have remained there from the previous management and who cannot tell the difference between nylon and duchesse satin.

Rumours are also mounting regarding Alessandro Michele at Valentino: backstage, there is talk of an ultimatum regarding sales figures ahead of his contract renewal next March, as well as Kering’s numerous attempts to back out of the definitive acquisition of the fashion house, which has already been postponed until 2029.

It seems that sales are not looking good even at Dior; the summer 2027 collection presented two days ago in Paris is perhaps the weakest under Jonathan Anderson’s creative direction; he is certainly a great creative talent but probably unsuited to a very expensive brand that dresses middle-class ladies and female executives who go to the office in the morning, rather than ‘jeunes filles en fleur’, who wouldn’t pay for a dress even if their lives depended on it, as Giambattista Valli bitterly discovered.

But it is well known that the LVMH group’s response times and methods differ from those of Kering, not least due to differences in financial performance and urgency. Kering needs to sell – a lot, and straight away – and indeed Demna, who lives almost permanently in Los Angeles and only visits the creative office in Milan from time to time, whilst trying to interpret its directives as best he can, presented a crowd of buyers and journalists with a very clever, perfectly marketable collection, steeped in nostalgia and what he described as an interplay “of aristocracy and pop culture, good and bad taste’ in a letter delivered to their homes a few hours before the show (a WhatsApp message would have sufficed – aren’t we in the age of sustainability?), but lacking that allure which creates the dream and, indeed, the desirability – see Saint Laurent two days ago, for which many will be willing to save up.

At the Portello, Demna has recreated the look of a future Gucci shop – in fact, the very one in Paris due to open shortly – he populated it with real shop assistants and real clothes, and had models, a couple of actresses and a small group of ladies renowned for their style – such as Osanna Visconti and Naty Abascal – wear jodhpurs, jackets and waistcoats that were very well-cut and also beautiful, of course, and sent them onto the catwalk with that characteristic defiance of his – of danger and even of the very bourgeois conventions he is supposed to cater to.

Is this what you want? This is what we call clothing – some more expensive, some more expensive; some better made, some less so – and this is also sold in large chains such as Cos and Zara, which are already crammed full of virtually identical striped T-shirts.

They’ll be copying Gucci’s looks in less than a minute, with the exception of the wide belts and oversized buckles used as martingales, which will, in fact, become collector’s items alongside the magnificent bags and other accessories that are, quite clearly, the ultimate sales objective of a brand which, after all – and until Tom Ford’s arrival many years ago – was selling precisely that: handbags and suitcases.

All this display of merchandising strategy – which is, of course, legitimate; we are here to sell, not necessarily to write fashion history, let alone to change the course of society, as Michele attempted to do for years with considerable success – does not, however, justify the constant change of creative direction. This is why one should not leave it to those one chooses – sometimes after gruelling negotiations – the time to step into the shoes of someone whom, in some cases, they have never even met (Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Cristóbal Balenciaga), who never actually existed (Bottega Veneta perhaps works precisely for this reason, because there is no prominent founder in anyone’s imagination) but whom they cannot ignore.

Because it looms there like Banquo’s ghost with its thousands of designs – that is, with its ‘codes’, as they say in the industry – which generally boil down to four lines and three products repeated ad infinitum with different leathers and embroidery, because the merchandising department no longer has the courage to experiment further, let alone close the fashion house upon the founder’s death, as was once the custom and as we have written on several occasions would have been necessary to do, starting with McQueen, whose agony it was high time to bring to an end.

There are cases – Dior stands out precisely because its founder was the one who ran it for the shortest time – where changes have almost always (Raf Simons, ugh) worked out. In many others, forcing someone with good ideas into the narrow confines of another’s way of thinking is a dangerous game, yet one that is often played at the expense of the creative person themselves by a generation of managers who have, on the contrary, learnt the rules to perfection.

One of these prominent figures, a former executive who has become fabulously wealthy, explained the technique to us: by calculating the production time for a collection – which generally takes at least two or three – you guarantee yourself a couple of good years of monthly fees with plenty of zeros, and a severance package worth millions. Then the process begins again elsewhere, as headhunters are often reluctant to take risks and therefore continue to put forward the same names, drawing from an established shortlist regardless of results. This is not a hard and fast rule, of course, but it does occur with some frequency.

So, whilst it is true that the major players in the luxury sector have begun to divest (LVMH has already sold off brands such as Off-White™, DFS, Marc Jacobs and Patou, Kering is desperately seeking a way out for Valentino, the merger between Estée Lauder and Puig in the beauty sector has fallen through, and Prada has indicated that the relaunch of Versace will take some time), whilst US funds are looking to diversify their portfolios and Chinese funds are turning to international sportswear, as demonstrated by the case of Icicle with the appointment of Sabato D’Sarno.

But the ‘consistency’, the resilience and the solidity that Kliger advocates – and which, at the Milan fashion shows, has often translated into a nostalgic effect, sometimes successful and even moving, as in the cases of Fendi and Armani, who seek first and foremost to build a creative and cultural bridge between different generations, and sometimes really not – seems to have become a resource available and accessible only to a select few.

Valentino is holding a fashion show on Sunday in Paris: we have just received a written request to bring a book, “either new or from your personal bookshelf: all the books collected will be donated to a selection of public libraries in Paris and other cities”. The initiative recalls an earlier advertisement for Mondadori’s stock market listing, in which a staircase composed of nearly a million real books was constructed, up which the future shareholder ascended. It is a nostalgic memory, though decidedly not a melancholy one.