Fashion in France: the new season of terror

The Paris fashion shows have come to an end and Anthony Vaccarello is stepping down – or, to be more precise, is being let go – from his role as creative director at Saint Laurent, a position he had held for ten years, during which time he tripled sales at the fashion house – a symbol of France on a par with Dior – save for a gradual decline over the last three seasons, coinciding with a grotesque escalation in retail prices. Kering, the parent company, made the official announcement early this morning, naturally before the stock markets opened: as we take our hands off the keyboard to submit this piece, the share price is up 3.45 per cent. In short, everything went as expected, as anticipated and as analysed.

We wrote about this ten days ago, and we would rather not repeat ourselves. However, the name being put forward most insistently as his replacement – that of Chemena Kamali, aged forty-five, currently creative director at Chloé, where she is doing an excellent job, and who until less than three years ago was Vaccarello’s deputy for womens’ ready-to-wear – warrants further reflection. Namely, whether the constant turnover of creative directors that now plagues the industry is not so much a way of revitalising a brand – the public is decidedly bewildered by it, and buyers demanding ‘consistency and continuity’ are very frustrated – but rather a skilful manoeuvre orchestrated by the industry itself to prolong its own tenure within its gilded walls, at the expense of shareholders and the public (between the new creative director’s arrival, settling in, and the reshuffling or adaptation of the team, the first proper collection doesn’t arrive until a year later – and then you’d want to give them at least another year to refine it; not everyone has the eye of Matthieu Blazy, who made Chanel desirable again at his very first show).

"I would like to express my sincerest thanks to Anthony for his ten years of dedication to the fashion house. During his tenure, he has steered Saint Laurent along a path of extraordinary growth, helping to establish it at the very highest levels in terms of desirability and image, and achieving work of the utmost significance both creatively and in terms of its cultural impact,” said Cédric Charbit, CEO of Saint Laurent, at the end of the announcement.

That the problem at Saint Laurent is not Vaccarello – despite his ten years as creative director, which in the current climate would be fatal for anyone – but rather a series of highly questionable commercial decisions, from which it is difficult to backtrack and which have led to a direct clash between the creative director and the fashion house’s top management for over a year, to the extent that his departure was already considered a certainty back in March (and, let us say, Vaccarello, going to ask for help from the former CEO Francesca Bellettini – who wanted Charbit in that role – was not a brilliant move), is demonstrated by the fact that the fashion show and the collection just presented in Paris are unanimously regarded by all international observers – including the public, who will not be able to afford his snake-heeled shoes and golden jackets – as the best of the season, and that Vaccarello has been named Designer of the Year by the CFDA – the US equivalent of the Italian Chamber of Fashion.

The new season of ‘Terror’ has, moreover, only just begun. Pierpaolo Piccioli is preparing to leave, after just over a year at the helm of Balenciaga, where he had been brought in to undertake a certain repositioning of the couture house following the Demna era, only to find himself designing streetwear; and rumours are once again swirling around Demna himself, whose latest show for Gucci, despite the immense and highly commercial collection – which Kering CEO Luca De Meo praised highly – does not seem to have made much of an impression on fashion enthusiasts, who instead rushed to clear the shelves at Zara as soon as the John Galliano capsule collection appeared, to the extent that almost everyone was sporting a piece from it at the Paris fashion shows.

The problem with today’s fashion industry, as buyers and end customers say, is not even – or at least not solely – the price, which has certainly excluded the middle class from accessing it and is also unnerving those who can afford to spend three thousand euros on a pair of shoes but no longer intend to be taken for a ride: it is, in fact, consistency and reliability. In the past, anyone seeking the Armani style knew where to go to buy it, and the same was true for Valentino, Prada, Saint Laurent and Dior; it is no coincidence that, apart from Raf Simons’s very brief stint, the creative directorships at the LVMH fashion houses have been very long-lasting. Constant changes create disorientation, confusion, recriminations and irony (for how many months did we read ‘Valentucci’ on social media in relation to the collections by Alessandro Michele, formerly of Gucci, for Valentino?) and, deep down, a profound unease at a gradual loss of identity that leaves a brand feeling increasingly hollow, tired and less appealing.