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This week, Seán McGirr was announced as the new creative director of Alexander McQueen, replacing Sarah Burton. It immediately sparked umbrage — not towards the relatively unknown Dublin-born designer, who most recently worked on JW Anderson’s ready-to-wear — but because his appointment meant that now all of luxury fashion conglomerate Kering’s creative directors are white men.
Shortly after the announcement on Tuesday, a collage of all six white male creative directors, shared by fashion education platform 1 Granary, went viral on social media. As did a tweet breaking down the statistics of women and POC creative directors of brands under other fashion conglomerates.
“Everyone is rooting for this young guy to be successful, but at the same time a lot of people are also very disappointed,” says Mandy Lee, an online fashion commentator and analyst. (Kering did not respond to a request for comment.)
The picture isn’t much brighter outside of Kering. Of the top 30 luxury brands in the Vogue Business Index, eight of the 33 creative director roles are currently held by women: Maria Grazia Chiuri (Dior), Stella McCartney, Virginie Viard (Chanel), Miuccia Prada (Prada and Miu Miu), Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski (Hermès), Donatella Versace (Versace) and Sandra Choi (Jimmy Choo). There are only two POC men in creative director roles: Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton men’s and Maximilian Davis at Ferragamo. Choi is the only women of colour in a creative director role across the 30 houses.
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As fashion editors, commentators and buyers took to social media to spotlight their favourite women designers, it became clear that the imbalance isn’t due to a lack of talent. The Met Museum’s upcoming exhibition, Women Dressing Women, opening in December, will feature pieces from over 70 designers including Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli, Iris van Herpen, Rei Kawakubo and Simone Rocha.
Turkish-born, London-based designer Dilara Fındıkoğlu was an industry favourite to replace Burton at McQueen. Martine Rose and Grace Wales Bonner, who both run successful labels, were rumoured contenders for the Louis Vuitton men’s role, which went to Williams in February. Why are these women being overlooked?
“The call is coming from inside the house, and it’s from the top,” says stylist and Perfect Magazine’s creative director Jeanie Annan-Lewin. “And, the people who are at the top pay very little attention to women and pay absolutely no attention to POCs. And, if you’re a woman and a POC, it’s kind of game over.”
Rose, Wales Bonner and Fındıkoğlu have never commented on whether the rumours were true of their possible recruitment at major labels. Annan-Lewin says the lack of diversity across luxury groups is a vicious cycle. More recently, appointments to creative director roles have been promotions from within the ranks of a brand’s design studio as flashy young designer appointments (all of them, notably, men) haven’t panned out. Promoting from within reduces the odds that diversity or a fresh perspective is considered. Past designer turnover may also send warning signs to young women and POC designers to consider the roles at all.
“Why would you give up your own thing to go and work for Vuitton if you don’t think that they’re going to have your best interests at heart? Until we provide safe and transparent places for people to work, you’re not going to encourage POCs or women to dive into those things,” Annan-Lewin says.
The glass ceiling for women and POC designers
Even if an individual manages to overcome the socio-economic barriers to entry in fashion, Annan-Lewin believes the battle is only just getting started, particularly for POCs. “Then you’re the only person in any of these rooms, which means that you spend a lot of time advocating for yourself. If you’re not strong enough to do that, then you kind of just get lost.”
Over the years there have been initiatives set up to address the lack of diversity in fashion. Kering launched an internal program in 2010 to advance gender equality, and was one of the first signatories of the Women’s Empowerment Principles charter established by UN Women and the United Nations Global Compact.
However, these initiatives often address the lower and middle levels of the industry, rather than the top tiers. “There was a big push in 2020 of ‘Oh, we’re all listening and learning’. But then the only people who got roles were juniors. It’s a way of fulfilling the bare minimum but not going above that. I know people who are higher up who are always passed over for roles,” continues Annan-Lewin. And although Kering credits mentoring programs for women accounting for 38 per cent of their executive board in recent years, none of them are POC.
Denim Tears founder Tremaine Emory is one of the few Black designers to reach the upper rungs of the fashion industry, having been appointed Supreme’s first creative director in February 2022. Within 18 months he had resigned, citing systematic racism as his reason for leaving (a claim Supreme refuted).
“We live in a world where the white male patriarchy controls things so I don’t see why people are so surprised,” says Emory of the backlash following McGirr's appointment.
The cult of the white male creative director
So, what exactly makes white male creative directors so compelling to fashion CEOs? “It’s the way that people are programmed, especially when you want to maintain power and control. You’re going to want to pass that down to someone who looks like you, and in this case, it’s white men,” says fashion commentator Lee. “I feel like there is some kind of fear that if we give women or POCs more power then the white men are going to lose control.”
Both Lee and Annan-Lewin believe that when we have just men at the helm designing fashion, regardless of their sexuality, they prescribe to the male gaze without even thinking of it. “The heels are high, the skirts are short, the catwalks are littered with thin, white models — we’re really telling one story and one way of being a woman over and over again,” cites Annan-Lewin as examples of this gaze in play. Burton’s final McQueen show was one of few in Paris that featured plus and mid-size models. In the Vogue Business size inclusivity report for Autumn/Winter 2023, the top three most size-inclusive shows (by a wide margin) were from young female designers Karoline Vitto, Sinead O’Dwyer and Ester Manas (Manas runs her brand with husband Balthazar Delepierre).
Fashion documentarian and writer Rian Phin believes the homogenisation of fashion is intentional. “Many of the men at the forefront of fashion aren’t unqualified for their positions — they have valid, progressive and thoughtful visions of the future of fashion. But, the active exclusion of the visions of women and creatives of colour may be in order to maintain a singular vision of fashion.” She adds: “Conglomerates may be trying to streamline customers in this way, which may make it easier to organise people into shoppers, but excludes more broad visions of fashion that reflect diverse visions of society. It may also be in their interests to exclude these voices, so that their power and singular storytelling goes unchallenged and unquestioned by people whose work could critique that kind of power.”
Will the outrage lead to change?
Although McGirr’s appointment has resulted in outrage, experts say it isn’t enough to cause meaningful change.
“I’m visualising the white male C-suite decision makers just weighing out the consequences of ‘a little social media outrage’, after announcing yet another white male creative director, versus the consequences on sales, which is the only thing that really matters to them,” says Berlin-based creative consultant and fashion editor of 032c Brenda Weischer. “So, as long as the consumers don’t view themselves as the real decision makers, with their investments, there will be little change.”
Emory is similarly downbeat. “People are reposting an infographic, but are they going to stop going to the shows? Are they going to stop buying Bottega?” he says. “People are complaining about all white male creative directors, but the numbers are up. If they’re complaining and the numbers are down, you’re going to see Wales Bonner and Martine Rose up in there. That’s how it works. That’s capitalism.”
For Emory the only way to change the fashion system is by supporting the designers people say they want to see in these positions. “Instead of waiting for Grace Wales Bonner to get a position at LVMH or Kering group, just support her brand. Her fashion shows, her clothing and the magazines and films that she makes are just as important, or more important, than if she went and worked at Louis Vuitton.”
Correction: The story was updated to reflect that Sandra Choi is a woman of colour in a creative director role at one of the top 30 luxury houses in the Vogue Business Index.
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