NEW YORK DESIGNER SHAKE-UP: Francisco Costa & Italo Zucchelli Out At Calvin Klein As Raf Simons Rumors Swirl

Courtesy Images by Danny Clinch for Calvin Klein

Perhaps his own women's line is not what Raf Simons has in the works after all. Maybe he's heading Stateside.
The revolving door of Europe's biggest designer brands has opened in New York today as the exits of both Francisco Costa and Italo Zucchelli (pictured left and right above), creative directors at Calvin Klein Collection for women and men respectively, have been announced. The company has indicated that all Calvin Klein products will be unified under a single creative director yet to be disclosed, while fashion insiders filled in the blank with Raf Simons' name, a rumor that has apparently been percolating recently. The new creative head will be announced "in due course” according to the company, which is in keeping with the belief that a non-compete clause in Raf Simons' former contract with Dior is delaying the completion of any transition until this summer.
While both Costa and Zucchelli have been credited with maintaining the fashion authority of the Calvin Klein brand after its purchase by PVH and the retirement of it's namesake, commercially, the Calvin Klein Collection business plummeted after Klein's retirement as the company turned its attention toward the newly introduced Calvin Klein White Label moderate line for profits and growth. The Collection lines remained beloved by the press, and Costa was a recipient of the CFDA award. The runway collections gained some traction in recent seasons as the parent company increased support for the neglected lines. Zucchelli's menswear has been embraced by avant-garde retailers like Opening Ceremony and Dover Street Market, and Costa's womenswear has found its way back into Bergdorf Goodman, but not all the way back to the prized, spacious in-store shop overlooking the Plaza  it commanded in its heyday through the 1990s. While Costa has had great success with red carpet dressing, he often dressed his stars in simpler gowns that recalled classic Calvin Klein styles like the sleek red tank gown Jennifer Lawrence wore at her first Oscar ceremony rather than his own more complex runway designs, causing a stylistic disconnect for the collection.
As for Simons, his success at the modernistic Jil Sander as well as his own influential men's label and balancing of ornate and minimalist looks at Dior make him a perfect choice to lead Calvin Klein —if it's true.
We will all have to wait a few months to find out for sure, but the prospect of a Simons led Calvin Klein is a promising idea for one of New York's greatest designer brands.

Francisco Costa, Italo Zucchelli to Exit Calvin Klein, Raf in Wings? (WWD)

RUMORS CONFIRMED: Anthony Vacarello To Take Charge At Saint Laurent Starting Now

Looks from Anthony Vaccarello's Spring 2016 Collection. Image: Michael Marson via AnthonyVaccarello.com

As has been widely expected, Italian-Belgian designer Anthony Vaccarello was officially named to replace Hedi Slimane today as creative director of Saint Laurent starting immediately. The rumors were essentially confirmed when, hours earlier, it was announced that he had left his position as the designer for the Versus Versace label. His first collection will be shown in October for the Spring 2017 season. As was also expected, Vaccarello will suspend his own signature label to focus all of his attention on Saint Laurent. It is not known whether or not he will be continuing the invitation-only haute couture line that Hedi Slimane launched last year under the original Yves Saint Laurent label, though parent company Kering has invested in new couture workrooms and a lavishly restored maison which was shown off at Slimane's final prêt-à-porter show in February.
Vaccarello is known for a sexy, sharply tailored aesthetic which should easily follow dovetail with the style that Slimane established during his four years at Saint Laurent. While Slimane spearheaded a top-to-bottom revamping of the company including extensive renovation boutiques and other points of sale, it is unlikely that Vaccarello will be instituting a new retail format or drastically changing things in a similar manner anytime soon. Unlike his colleague at Gucci, Alessandro Michele, whose new retail concept is slowly being rolled out to boutiques and in-store-shops, Vaccarello is not being brought in to inject new excitement into a fading brand. In fact, like Bouchra Jarrar who is soon to begin design duties at Lanvin, he is tasked with keeping things humming after the departure of a designer for whom things had been otherwise going extremely well. A new direction is not exactly what Kering is looking for at Saint Laurent, so Vaccarello will be closely watched this Fall to see if he can continue the momentum that Slimane has created at Saint Laurent while establishing his own identity as a designer.

Saint Laurent Confirms Anthony Vaccarello Hire (WWD)

 

REVOLVING DOOR: Hedi Slimane Officially Flies The Saint Laurent Coop

Courtesy Photo

As has been widely rumored since the beginning of the year, Hedi Slimane has officially exited his position as creative director of Yves Saint Laurent.
He ends a four-year tenure characterized by anticipation and controversy as he was given rare authority to rebuild the renowned couture house from the bottom up starting with the feather ruffling rebranding of the ready-to wear as "Saint Laurent" and ending with a restoration of the dormant haute couture collection as an invitation-only venture under the original "Yves Saint Laurent" label. Though he never actually showed a full haute couture show, his final runway collection for Fall 2016, shown in Paris in February, was presented as if it were one, in silence with each look's number announced by Bénédicte de Ginestous who served the same role at Yves Saint Laurent's own haute couture shows. The collection was actually made in the house's couture workrooms, though it is in fact ready-to-wear, and its ad campaign, starring Cara Delevingne photographed by Slimane, was revealed by the designer himself only a few days ago.
Executives from Kering, which owns the business, have been open about the fact that Slimane's contract would end on March 31st, and that they would be negotiating until that point. It is difficult to understand how they couldn't come to terms with the designer to continue, since it appears that they bent over backwards to get him to come to the job in the first place, and the collaboration has been mutually beneficial to say the least. He was allowed to move the design studio to Los Angeles where he lives, and was given the authority to change just about everything about the brand from renaming the prêt-à-porter collections to redesigning the boutiques and in-store shops which were renovated at great expense. The amount of attention and funds lavished on Slimane was so notable that it reportedly rankled Kering's other star designer at Balenciaga, Nicolas Ghesquiere, enough for him to walk away from the brand he had already reconceived to great acclaim.
Ghesquiere is now comfortably ensconced at the Kering arch-rival LVMH-owned Louis Vuitton, while Balenciaga has just debuted the first collection by his second successor in four years. Now Kering is faced with replacing Slimane. Though not beloved by critics due to both his high-handed treatment of the press and collections that many of them found derivative and repetitive, he is adored by celebrity acolytes, and he managed to catapult Saint Laurent to over $1 billion in sales last year. Rumors have swirled around Belgian born designer Anthony Vaccarello as his replacement. He has his own collection and is also the designer for Versus by Versace. An announcement is expected soon enough for him to start work on Saint Laurent's Spring 2015 collections.
In the meantime, speculation continues about what Slimane's next move will be. It is unlikely that he will fill the most prominent open position in Paris available the moment, creative director at Christian Dior, as it is known to come with far less authority over branding than his now previous job. Slimane had been vocal about the fact that he had no influence over the Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics and fragrance business which is controlled by L'Oréal. Rumors had that as a sticking point in his re-negotiations with Kering, but the conglomerate was not in a position deal on that front. The most likely scenario has Slimane finally starting his own fashion house, presumably based in Los Angeles, but he is expected to take his time. He let a long five years lapse between leaving Dior Homme in 2007 and starting at Saint Laurent in 2012 and, though he now has the experience as a women's designer that would make it much easier to finance a new fashion brand, it is not known if he is in any hurry to jump back into the fray. Until that happens, however, his future moves are likely to be fashion's biggest unanswered questions.

Saint Laurent Confirms Hedi Slimane Exit (WWD)

POSITION FILLED: Bouchra Jarrar Is Your New Lanvin Designer

Courtesy Image via WWD

As has been widely rumored, Paris based designer Bouchra Jarrar (pictured at right) has been named artistic director of women’s collections at Lanvin starting this Monday. Jarrar replaces Alber Elbaz whose departure last year stunned fans and customers and left his design staff not only heartbroken, but litigious, taking the storied house and its owner to court to protest the designers ouster. The first collection without Elbaz, shown last week, elicited scathing reviews, indicating that leaving the design direction to Elbaz's remaining staff was not a viable 'place holder' option for even one more season as has been done at houses like Dior which is currently between creative directors. For her part, Jarrar is a well-liked choice who seems qualified to help push Lanvin beyond the controversy of Elbaz's departure and reassure nervous retailers who have invested in the label and built loyal customer followings. After stints at Jean-Paul Gaultier, Balenciaga under both Josephus Thimister and Nicolas Ghesquiere, Jean-Louis Scherrer and Christian Lacroix, Jarrar started her own house in 2010 and has shown both ready-to-wear and haute couture collections as an official member of the Chamber Syndicale de la Haute Couture. It has not been confirmed that she will continue on with her own label as she concurrently designs for Lanvin, however she is reported to have taken on minority investment for it as recently as last year. Her own company is relatively small compared to Lanvin, however, and she will presumably have to contend with the same challenges that faced Elbaz and led to the conflict that ended in his dismissal, namely the lack of company owned stores to even out the brand's balance between wholesale and retail as well as the widely reported lack of funding that has hindered Lanvin's ability to compete with bigger labels in the most profitable handbag and accessory categories. She will, however, be able to restore some good will for the brand and confidence that it will not fall back into the obscurity from whence it emerged when Elbaz became its creative director. “Joining Lanvin satisfies my desire to create and express myself in a space of larger expression,” she says as part of today's announcement, and all eyes will be on her when she shows her first collection this fall for Spring 2017.

 

Lanvin Confirms Bouchra Jarrar as New Women’s Designer (WWD)

REPORT: Lanvin Employees In Turmoil Following Alber Elbaz Dismissal

Alber Elbaz takes his final bow at Lanvin's Spring/Summer 2016 runway show in a still from the video on Lanvin's website

While the luxury industry's collective head is still spinning from the unexpected turn of events at some of the most prominent labels in Paris, it looks like the story of Alber Elbaz at Lanvin might not be completely over. WWD is reporting that the house's 330 employees are devastated that the beloved designer has been pushed out and are using whatever resources available to them to protest. The company's works council, an employee board that that French companies apparently have, is demanding that Taiwan-based Lanvin owner Shawn-Lan Wang return to Paris to answer their concerns and hear their pleas to reinstate Elbaz. 
Shortly after Elbaz's departure from Lanvin was confirmed, it became clear that he did not resign, but was dismissed by the owner over disagreements not about the label's creative direction or his workload, but about business issues, specifically, Ms. Wang's failure to secure sufficient financing to successfully support Lanvin's continued growth. Elbaz, along with other minority shareholders, have been pressuring her to sell her majority stake to someone better able to fund the company's expansion, specifically the rollout of more company owned boutiques. This is an area where Lanvin lags behind its competitors, receiving only about 20% of its revenue from its own stores, causing it to rely too heavily on the wholesale business. This has slowed Lanvin's growth as well as development of ancillary divisions like handbags and accessories. WWD had previously reported that Ms. Wang has been reluctant to sell, demanding too high of a price for the company and requiring a handpicked buyer which .
Whether Lanvin's employees have the clout to reverse their boss's decision, or Elbaz will even return if asked remains to be seen, but it seems that Ms. Wang has not only turned out her golden goose, but also alienated the rest of the company, whose support she will need to move forward.

Lanvin Employees Contest Alber Elbaz Ouster (WWD)

BOMBSHELL REDUX: Alber Elbaz Is Leaving Lanvin

 

Alber winning the SUPERSTAR Award! We love you Alber ❤️ #MerylStreep #AlberElbaz 📷 Courtesy of FGI / Matteo Pradoni / BFA.com. @fginyc

A photo posted by LANVIN (@lanvinofficial) on Oct 28, 2015 at 8:02am PDT

So, basically, no designer is secure in his or her job unless they also own the company outright.
Today, on the heels of Raf Simons' exit from Christian Dior, Lanvin announced that the designer who seemed most secure in his position at a great Parisian maison, Alber Elbaz, would be leaving his job as creative director there following a disagreement with the company's major shareholder.
The obvious conjecture is that much as they did with Nicolas Ghesquiere, who left Balenciaga and landed at Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault and LVMH will scoop up the much loved designer and install him in the corresponding post at Dior that Raf Simons just vacated.
Whether or not that will happen, and the hopes of Elbaz's many fans and probably a lot of retailers are certainly pinned on it, remains to be seen, but there is a similar scenario connecting the situations of both Ghesquiere and Elbaz. Both can be credited with not only reviving storied French couture houses which had fallen into quasi obscurity, but reshaping them from the bottom up and catapulting them to the forefront of the fashion scene in Paris. Both departed their respective companies with equity stakes originally meant to keep them tied to the houses and resistant to potential poaching by competing labels. Both left as result of unhappiness with upper management, requiring costly buyouts of their ownership stakes.
A hint of Elbaz's recent state of mind can be gleaned from an acceptance speech he gave just last week when he was honored at Fashion Group International's annual Night of Stars gala, pictured above with presenter Meryl Streep in an Lanvin Instagram post from earlier today. In an unexpectedly long speech, Elba expounded on the relentlessly accelerating pace of the industry and the pressure it puts on designers' creative process. Would Elbaz even want the notoriously high pressure job at Dior which comes with its own limitations and pressures? He has been rumored to have interviewed with LVMH for open design positions in the past, but ultimately choosing to remain at Lanvin where he has had his greatest success. Elbaz released the following departure statement of his own:

"At this time of my departure from Lanvin on the decision of the company’s majority shareholder, I wish to express my gratitude and warm thoughts to all those who have worked with me passionately on the revival of Lanvin over the last 14 years; express my affection to all my wonderful colleagues in the Lanvin ateliers who accompanies me, and who enriched and supported my work. Together we have met the creative challenge presented by Lanvin and have restored its radiance and have returned it to its rightful position among France’s absolute luxury fashion houses.

"I also wish to express my profound and deepest gratitude to all of the clients and friends, to the French and international press and to all those business partners who collaborated with Lanvin, providing us with support since 2001."

"I wish the house of Lanvin the future it deserves among the best French luxury brands, and hope that it finds the business vision it needs to engage in the right way forward."

With two of the biggest design jobs in Paris now open, let the speculations fly, but it must be noted that well-known Elbaz fan and friend Natalie Portman has a fragrance endorsement at Dior, but often appears in Lanvin when her contract allows her to wear other labels. There's one person who would likely be thrilled to keep her favorite designer's clothes coming, regardless of what label he designs under.

Alber Elbaz Leaving Lanvin, Label Confirms (Business of Fashion)

BREAKING NEWS: Raf Simons Exiting Christian Dior

The Fashion world will be driven to distraction for at least the next few weeks trying to predict who will be tapped to fill its most prominent vacancy now that Raf Simons has announced that he is leaving his post as creative director for Christian Dior. In a surprise move, Simons chose not to renew his contract by all reports for personal reasons despite Dior management's efforts to negotiate a deal for him to stay. While his reasons may be clarified in days to come, he wouldn't be the first designer to feel overburdened by the six collections he was responsible for there as couturier and women's prêt-à-porter designer along with his responsibilities at his own Belgian-based menswear label where he originally made his name in the 1990s.
Expect the same names to be bandied about as the last time a prominent vacancy emerged, but speculators should keep in mind that some of the most qualified candidates —Nicolas Ghesquière, Riccardo Tisci, Phoebe Philo etc.— are already ensconced as fashion labels which, like Dior, are controlled  by LVMH chief Bernard Arnault. It is unlikely that they would be moved while the companies where they are currently employed are doing too well for their progress to be disrupted.
The job will have to be filled soon. Any new appointment will have to have a Dior Haute Couture collection for Spring 2016 ready to be shown in January, so let the speculations fly.

HUMAN RESOURCES: Alexander Wang Said To Be Already Exiting Balenciaga

Didn't he just get there?
It's never a good sign when your supposedly confidential contract renewal negotiations are breathlessly reported upon for weeks, and while there has been no official announcement, WWD is reporting that Alexander Wang (pictured at right) is already leaving his post as creative director at Balenciaga after barely three years at the fabled house. Wang was hired to replace Nicolas Ghesquiere who left abruptly in 2012 and now appears to be comfortably ensconced at Louis Vuitton.
While Wang's tenure at the house has been favorably but not rapturously received by critics and the press, business is said to have been good under the designer whose notoriety kept attention on the label after Ghesquiere's unceremonious exit. He has revamped the company's retail design templates, kept its important handbag and accessory business humming with new styles and even tweaked the logo. Unlike his predecessor, however, Wang's design approach at Balenciaga has been much more reverent of the style of the brand's namesake, offering a sleeker, more elegant fashion image often focused on a black and while color schemes, which has dismayed fashion watchers who were expecting more adventuresome looks. Ghesquiere revived the nearly dormant label by veering between collections that only occasionally paid tribute to the archives and ones that highlighted streetwear looks or innovative materials that looked to the future. His signature item, the motorcycle bag, is decidedly not a reference to the sculptural couture designs of Cristóbal Balenciaga, and yet it remains an important component of the accessory collection well over a decade after its introduction.
It is also thought that Wang's expected departure signals the designer's interest in focusing more on his own New York based label which continues to grow. The rumored move suggests that the paradigm of a star designer heading two big brands based on two different continents may be over as creative directors find the constant commuting exhausting and the corporately owned couture houses increasingly want designers who will focus all their creativity on one label. Designers like Christophe Lemaire and Marc Jacobs have both indicated a desire to consolidate their attention on their own labels as part of the reason for their leaving Hermès and Vuitton respectively. For its part, WWD is reporting that executives from Balenciaga and Kering, its parent company, are looking for a lesser known emerging designer who can be promoted to replace Wang and hopefully create the kind of excitement and press attention that Gucci designer Alessandro Michele has enjoyed since replacing Frida Giannini at the Kering-owned Gucci earlier this year —although the jury is still out on how customers will react to Gucci's dramatically changed fashion offerings. Wang's final collection for Balenciaga is said to be for Spring 2016 to be shown this fall in Paris. If there is to be a replacement announced, look for it to happen after Paris Fashion Week — if the company can keep it under wraps until then.

Alexander Wang, Balenciaga Said Parting Ways (WWD)

CHAIN REACTION: Abercrombie & Fitch Just Picked Up A New Look From Club Monaco

There are more changes in store for Abercrombie & Fitch since the ouster of the chain's former CEO Mike Jeffries late last year. While the stores' lighting has been turned up, the music has been turned down, the fragrance pumped into the air inside has been reduced dramatically and the staffers have been instructed to keep their shirts on, the main concern for the future of the company has been its product. The khakis, rugby shirts, jeans and polos that form the backbone of its men's merchandise have remained little changed over the years since the chain became a phenomenon in the late 1990s, except for varying degrees of logo decoration. It looks like some profound change is about to hit the brand as it has just stolen a new design director from the contemporary chain Club Monaco. Aaron Levine (pictured above) has just been named head of men's design at Abercrombie & Fitch & Co. according to WWD, which suggests that the brand is looking for a more sophisticated fashion direction in the seasons to come. Levine left Club Monaco earlier this month, and his previous experience includes stints at Jack Spade, Rogues Gallery and Hickey, the fleeting but fondly remembered contemporary offshoot of the classic men's suit brand Hickey Freeman.
While Levine's plans for Abercrombie's fashion direction have yet to be revealed, as vice-president of men's design at Club Monaco he succeeded in transforming its menswear offerings from a pleasant assortment of contemporary sportswear trends at a price to a vastly more cohesive collection of classic menswear with a youthful silhouette and a quirky edge that became a favorite of fashion critics as well as customers. He also brought in select footwear and accessory resources to complement and elevate the chain's products in a manner not unlike that of rival J.Crew.
While we don't expect that Abercrombie & Fitch stores are going to be turned into hipster gentleman's clubs right away, Levine's appointment suggest that the Abercrombie of the future may break free from the collegiate/athletic/preppy style parameters that, up until now, it has maintained to a fault.

Aaron Levine Joining Abercrombie & Fitch (WWD)

HUMAN RESOURCES: DKNY Is Getting A Public School Degree

In a surprising and intriguing bit of personnel change, Dao-Yi Chao and Maxwell Osborne (pictured at right) who have reaped acclaim as the designers of the Public School label have just been named creative directors of the DKNY brand. There have been rumors the longtime DKNY creative director Jane Chung would be replaced, and WWD confirms that she will be transitioned out of the position while Chao and Osborne will show their first DKNY collection in September for women. Their menswear will debut the next season for Fall 2016.
The designers have been recipients of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and are currently nominated for the CFDA Award for Menswear and the Swarovski Award for Womenswear. They released a statement, “We both grew up in New York and DKNY has always been part of the landscape of this city in our formative years as designers and as New Yorkers. It is one of the brands that helped change the game for us and for American fashion. It evokes everything our city was always about — energy, disruption, new thinking and transcending all boundaries. We are extremely proud and excited to be joining the company and to contribute to the next chapter of DKNY, one of the most iconic American brands created by Donna Karan, a true inspiration.”

As for the DKNY brand, WWD confirms that parent company LVMH is actively investing in the label to reinvigorate it and to that end have made another lower profile but no less interesting hire in Hector Muelas as the newly created post of chief image officer at Donna Karan International. Mules was formerly creative director of worldwide marketing communications of Apple Inc. and represents something for a turnabout as Apple has been raiding top fashion companies in recent years for retail and marketing executives.
Things are expected to remain as they are, personnel-wise, at the flagship Donna Karan New York label where the designer herself will remain the creative director. Karan has been said to support the design change at DKNY and the efforts to restore it to a more prominent profile in the contemporary world. One thing we can definitely predict is that the DKNY show will be a much hotter ticket than it has been in years. What happens after that is up to Chao and Osborne.

Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne Tapped as DKNY Creative Directors (WWD)