Why are most creative directors of luxury brands men?

The lack of diversity in creative leadership is a result of fashion’s recent obsession with growth and commercialisation, and the announcement of the appointment brought the 2024 Spring/Summer fashion week to a close amid anger.

According to Fashion Business Express, Kering Group announced in a statement last Tuesday that Seán McGirr will serve as the third creative director in the history of Alexander McQueen brand, but did not disclose the release time of the new series. At the same time, designer Sarah Burton also ended her 12-year career as Alexander McQueen’s creative director through the 2024 Spring/Summer series released at Paris Fashion Week on September 30.

However, this appointment, which Kering Group originally believed would push Alexander McQueen closer to the 1 billion euro club, immediately caused heated discussions on social media and even criticism from industry insiders.

Seán McGirr will serve as the third creative director in the history of Alexander McQueen.

The doubts are not directed at Seán McGirr. In fact, although this will be the first time for the young Seán McGirr to grasp the creative direction of the entire luxury brand, his talent is indeed widely recognized by the industry.

Seán McGirr graduated from Central Saint Martins College in London and obtained a master’s degree in 2014. He began his career at Burberry and Vogue Hommes Japan. From 2014 to 2018, he worked in the creative studios of Uniqlo Paris and Tokyo, following the guidance of Christophe Lemaire to design men’s wear. Later, he joined Dries Van Noten and JW Anderson to lead women’s wear design and men’s and women’s wear series respectively.

But the arrival of Seán McGirr means that the creative directors of Kering Group, the leading luxury group from France, will all be white men. They are Sabato De Sarno of Gucci, Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga, Norbert Stumpfl of Brioni, Anthony Vaccarello of Saint Laurent and Matthieu Blazy of Bottega Veneta.

Kering Group’s creative directors will all be white men.

1 Granary, a fashion media founded by Olya Kuryshchuk, a graduate of Central Saint Martins College in London, first pointed this out on Instagram, attaching a puzzle of six designers’ avatars.

In this post that has received 23,000 likes and nearly a thousand comments, 1 Granary shared the views of several female designers.

“All the women gave up everything and ended up just serving men who were paid 10 times more than them.” “This is an insult to every woman working in this industry – not because Seán McGirr was appointed, but because the entire team will be led by men.” “I really don’t know which woman of our generation would go for such a job.”

The fierce language and undisguised accusations caused the topic to spread rapidly, and it fermented again with the second reposting of fashion bloggers such as Diet Prada and industry insiders. Fashion commentator and analyst Mandy Lee said that everyone is happy for Seán McGirr’s success, but at the same time, many people are very disappointed.

People are disappointed with the obvious limitations of Kering Group, as an industry leader, on the issue of gender diversity. What’s worse is that Kering is not an isolated case.

Among the 64 shows at this Milan Fashion Week, only two female designers, Lucie Meier of Jil Sander and Grazia Malagoli of Sportmax, were hired by the brands as co-artistic directors and creative directors, respectively.

Female participation improved at Paris Fashion Week, especially among the four highest-earning luxury brands, Louis Vuitton, Chanel , Hermès and Dior, where only Louis Vuitton’s top creative layer lacked a female perspective. However, if industry discussions or market attention are taken into account, Chanel Creative Director Virginie Viard, Hermès Creative Director Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, and Dior Creative Director Maria Grazia

Chiuri, who are often accused of overly commercial designs , are obviously not comparable to those celebrity male designers who are hailed as fashion darlings.

Lucie Meier (right) of Jil Sander is a creative director rarely hired by brands during Milan Fashion Week

In addition to intuitive feelings, the summary of numbers may be more impactful. After the topic sparked heated discussions, some media pointed out that among the top 30 creative directors of luxury brands in the Vogue Business Index, there are only 7 women, Maria Grazia Chiur , Stella McCartney , Virginie Viard, Miuccia Prada , Nadège Vanhee-Cybulsk, Donatella Versace and Sandra Choi.

If we look at the group, except for LVMH, which has 22% white female creative directors and 16% male people of color, the two luxury giants Kering and Richemont Group previously had 0% of women and people of color. With the appointment of Chloé’s new creative director, Chemena Kamali will become the only female creative director of Richemont Group.

Ironically, the industry image created by luxury brands is exactly the opposite of these numbers. Perhaps due to its support for LGBTQI issues, luxury groups have been seen as pioneers in recent years, calling for wider attention and awareness of structural inequality.

Kering launched an internal program to promote gender equality as early as 2010, and was one of the first signatories of the Women’s Empowerment Principles established by UN Women and the UN Global Compact. The group

also launched the “Women in Motion” project at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and continues to this day. It was originally intended to honor female filmmakers in front of and behind the camera, and then continued to grow and expand from the film field to photography, art, design, music and other fields.

Kering Group launched the “Women in Motion” project at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and has continued to this day

In July this year, Gucci, a luxury brand under Kering Group, even became the first Italian luxury company to obtain gender equality certification.

The certification was awarded by Bureau Veritas and evaluated six key indicators, including culture and strategy, governance, human resources processes, opportunities for women’s growth and inclusion, gender pay equality, support for parenting, and work-life balance.

In a statement, Marco Bizzarri, then president and CEO of Gucci, pointed out that in the future, gender equality will be further achieved through specific actions such as using innovative technologies to reduce bias in the job selection process, narrowing the gender pay gap, implementing parental leave policies, and public awareness activities such as Gucci Chime.

LVMH Group stated in its latest “Social and Environmental Responsibility Report” that it plans to eliminate internal gender pay differences by 2025 and ensure that women account for 50% of all key positions. The

proportion of women in the board of directors and executive teams of luxury groups has indeed increased significantly in the past two years. In July this year, Kering Group announced that Maureen Chiquet, former global CEO of Chanel, would be an independent director, bringing the number of female members on the board to six, accounting for nearly half.

In addition to Delphine Arnault, the eldest daughter of CEO Bernard Arnault, LVMH’s board of directors also includes Iris Knobloch, Sophie Chassat, Clara Gaymard, Marie-Josée Kravis, Marie-Laure, Natacha Valla and others.

Kering Group has 6 female members on its board of directors, accounting for nearly half of the total

In this way, the view that the gender equality initiatives that industry insiders have said are often taken place in the lower and middle levels of the industry rather than at the top does not seem to be comprehensive. However, gender diversity achieved at the decision-making level still cannot make up for the absence of female roles in the top creative positions.

When talking about the reasons behind the lack of diverse perspectives in the creative department, Caroline Pill, a partner at London executive headhunting consulting firm Heidrick & Struggles, admitted that the skill set required to become a fashion creative director is vague compared to other roles such as CEO, financial officer or marketing talent, which makes it more difficult to apply strict standards for diversity, fairness and inclusion.

Luxury brands have also given answers to related questions before. They believe that the lack of gender and racial diversity is due to structural factors. Since most of these European fashion companies did not become global companies until the 1990s, the current pool of candidates who can serve as creative directors faces the problem of lack of diversity.

In a sense, this statement may be just a fig leaf for the industry, and it is not that there are no excellent female designers in the market.

The exhibition “Women Dressing Women” opened in December at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will display the works of more than 70 female designers, including Jeanne Lanvin , Elsa Schiaparelli, Iris van Herpen , Rei Kawakubo and Simone Rocha, most of whom have been sought after by the market.

If it is just because of their lack of experience, then luxury brands cannot explain why they can take the risk of hiring male newcomers instead of female newcomers.

In the past two years, the fashion industry has set off a trend of boldly appointing young creative directors. Including Bally’s former creative director Rhuigi Villaseñor, Ann Demeulemeester’s former creative director Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Ferragamo’s appointment of Maximilian Davis, born in 1995, Nina Ricci’s appointment of Harris Reed , born in 1996 , Helmut Lang’s appointment of Peter Do, etc.

All the names are male without exception. Before Pharrel Williams was named as Louis Vuitton’s new men’s creative director, there were rumors that Martine Rose, who was shortlisted for the LVMH Prize in 2017, would take the position, but it turned out to be a rumor.

Mandy Lee bluntly stated that the fundamental reason for choosing a man as creative director instead of a woman is that when the CEO is in power, he would rather hand over control to someone similar to him, not a woman, not a black person, but a white man. “I think they have a fear that if more power is given to women or people of color, then white men will lose control.”

But creativity from a female perspective is indispensable to the fashion industry. More than 60% of luxury fashion sales are led by female shoppers, and male creators can’t get rid of the male gaze in their works anyway.

When the creators of luxury goods come from the same group, it is difficult to target different genders and provide services to more races, which is why the industry has been constantly challenged by the market recently.

However, fashion documentary director and writer Rian Phin believes that these top leaders are not unaware of the importance of gender equality in creative decision-making, but they exclude women and people of color in order to maintain a single vision of fashion and convey a more distinct and simple market image.

This means that the lack of diversity in creative leadership in the luxury industry may be the result of fashion’s recent obsession with continued growth and commercialization. In the eyes of the capital market, diversity may only be an embellishment to convey a positive image of the group, but it cannot leverage the fundamental growth of performance.

Fortunately, as the voice of women’s issues grows louder, superficial narratives can no longer meet the market’s expectations for luxury groups in practicing diversity.